Ukraine is angry at the West and criticizes its steps towards Moscow and demands sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Western countries to impose sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry in the wake of the fighting over the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

Zelensky said in a video address broadcast on Saturday evening that Russia is using a nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine to intimidate people and blackmail the Ukrainian leadership and the world at large.

Russia, the nuclear-armed power, is building nuclear power plants in several countries.

Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other for days of being responsible for the bombing of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Zelensky accused the Russian forces of using the Russian-occupied position as a fortress from which to shoot the small towns of Nikopol and Maranits on the other bank of the Dnipro reservoir.

He warned that the deployment of Russian forces at the site of the nuclear power plant “increases the radioactive threat to Europe to a level that did not exist even in the most difficult moments of confrontation during the Cold War.”

In the video, Zelensky called for a “stern response.”

Earlier on Saturday, Ukraine called on Western countries to assist it with judicial assistance in connection with war crimes committed by Russia during its invasion of the country.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in a lengthy statement on Facebook, on Saturday, that Kyiv needs experts in military law and specialists in war crimes investigations, to punish the Russian aggressors.

The minister added that he had sent a similar request, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the Ukraine Contact Group, which includes countries such as the United States, Britain and Germany, which coordinate arms transfers to the Ukrainian armed forces.

Reznikov also called for the formation of “international groups to help work on certain issues of Russian war crimes in Ukraine”.

The Minister stressed, in particular, the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia, and said that they are subjected to widespread torture and murder in captivity.

He also requested that international experts be granted access to a prison located in Olinivka, near the city of Donetsk, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in an attack in late July.

“This crime, regardless of the reactions of institutions such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, calls for a decisive response from the United Nations,” the defense minister said.

“It is the United Nations that should compel Russia to allow representatives of the Red Cross to visit the Ukrainian prisoners of war in Olinivka,” he added.

Moscow and Kiev blamed each other for the attack on the Olenivka prison.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February, a number of serious crimes against civilians have been reported, which Kyiv and most of the international community blame on Moscow.