London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

G7 calls for return of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to Ukraine control

G7 calls for return of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to Ukraine control

Group of Seven condemns Russia’s kidnapping of staff at nuclear facility.
The Group of Seven of the world’s advanced economies condemned Russia’s kidnapping of the leadership of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and called for the immediate return of full control of the facility to Kyiv.

“We condemn Russia’s repeated kidnapping of Ukrainian” Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant “leadership and staff and denounce the application of other forms of pressure on remaining Ukrainian personnel,” the Nonproliferation Directors General of the G7 countries wrote in a statement Saturday evening. The group includes the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.

They urged Russia “to immediately return full control” of the plant “to its rightful sovereign owner, Ukraine, to remove all Russian personnel from the facility, and to stop any attempts to recklessly and dangerously place” it under Russian administration “which could further jeopardize its safe and secure operations.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin this month ordered his government to take control of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power facility.

The alarm over the nuclear plant comes as Ukraine’s air force said in a statement on Saturday that Russia launched a “massive missile attack” pounding energy facilities and other infrastructure in central and western parts of Ukraine, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power. Parts of Kyiv suffered power cuts into the evening.

“The geography of this latest mass strike is very wide,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. And on Sunday, according to the Agence France-Presse, Kyiv’s energy operator said that scheduled “stabilization” power cuts have been introduced in the Ukrainian capital after the repeated Russian strikes.

Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear energy agency, on Tuesday accused Russia of detaining two senior employees at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, according to media reports.

In a statement on social media, Energoatom said Russian forces on Monday “kidnapped” the head of information technology Oleg Kostyukov and the plant’s assistant general director Oleg Osheka and “took them to an unknown destination.”

In a separate development of the war, that has now reached its eight month, Ukraine’s air force reported on Sunday that 14 Iranian-made “Shahed-136” kamikaze drones were shot down overnight in Mykolaiv Oblast, in southern Ukraine.

The EU this week sanctioned three top Iranian generals and the Iranian drone maker Shahed Aviation Industries, and also proposed to further sanction two individuals and two entities already hit by restrictive measures, “in view of their role in the development and delivery” of the drones to Russia.

Tehran denies supplying drones to Moscow in the Ukraine war and on Saturday reportedly strongly condemned a call by France, Germany and the U.K. for the United Nations to investigate the accusations that Russia has used Iranian-made drones.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
×