Russian army engineers have rigged explosives to an industrial chemical plant in Crimea next to what is described as a toxic acid lake reservoir, Ukrainian news outlets reported.
Oleksandr Prokudin, the Ukraine-appointed head of the Kherson region's military administration, recently warned that detonating the explosives would result in a disaster worse than than the Soviet Union's 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, The Kyiv Post said Friday.
Russia has been accused of targeting Ukrainian infrastructure throughout the more than 15 months of war that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched on February 24, 2022. This week, Ukraine blamed Moscow for destroying a Soviet-era dam in Nova Kakhovka, a city in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, that caused massive flooding and necessitated the evacuation of thousands of civilians. Kremlin officials said Ukraine sabotaged the dam.
Ukrainian military analyst Roman Svitan spoke about the facility, the Crimea Titan plant, during a Thursday appearance on the Apostrophe TV news channel, according to the Kyiv Post. He reportedly said the Russians could set off the explosives at the plant—in the Russian-occupied city of Armiansk—if they fear Ukrainian forces are prepared to attack.
"The plant is already completely mined, including containers with acid, chlorine and reagents," Svitan said, according to a translation by the Kyiv Post.
"They recently began to rig explosives there, because they saw the Armed Forces of Ukraine [AFU] could cross the Dnieper [River] and attack Armiansk....Blowing Crimean Titan up will have military expediency for the Russians, since chemical emissions can slow down the movement of the AFU."
In a video posted June 2 on Telegram, Prokudin warned that the explosives going off at Crimea Titan would "release thousands of tons of toxic substances into the atmosphere" and cause a incident "worse than Chernobyl."
"Residents of the Republic of Crimea and at least seven other Ukrainian regions will be affected, as well as Turkey [across the Black Sea] and the aggressor country itself," he said, according to a translation by The New Voice of Ukraine website.
Crimea Titan is said to have once been one of Eastern Europe's largest manufacturers of titanium dioxide pigment, a chemical used in paint, sunscreen, medicines and food coloring. However, use of titanium dioxide was banned by the European Union last year for use as a food additive because of fears of it being possibly carcinogenic.
The Kyiv Post said that the plant's potential for environmental harm "is well documented." The New York Times reported in 2018 that authorities in the region evacuated 4,000 children from towns and villages near the plant because of noxious sulfur dioxide gas blowing from the toxic lake reservoir.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment.
