(NEW YORK) — Canada’s travel advisory for visitors to the United States has been updated to warn LGBTQ travelers about laws and policies that may affect the community.
“Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons,” the travel advisory states. “Check relevant state and local laws.”
The ‘2S’ abbreviation refers to Two-Spirit, a term used in Indigenous and First Nations communities to describe people who are not straight or cisgender.
The travel advisory page links to a separate page of travel advice for LGBTQ residents, encouraging them to research and follow the laws of the country they are visiting, “even if these laws infringe on your human rights.”
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland addressed the new travel advisory Tuesday, backing the decision of Global Affairs Canada, which oversees such advisories.
“Every Canadian government, very much including our government, needs to put at the center of everything we do the interests and the safety of every single Canadian and of every single group of Canadians,” Freeland told reporters in a press conference.
She continued, “That’s what we’re doing now, that’s what we’re always going to do.”
The U.S. has seen a rise in legislation targeting the LGBTQ community in recent years. Bills have increasingly targeted transgender health care, inclusion of LGBTQ identities in classroom content, public drag performances, and more.
According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures in 2023, with at least 70 being enacted.
The HRC, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organizations, in June declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. The organization cited what they described as the record-breaking wave of legislation targeting the LGBTQ community and an increasingly hostile environment.
Ahead of Pride Month, celebrated in June, the Department of Homeland Security in May also warned law enforcement and government agencies about “intensified” threats of violence against the community within the previous year.
According to DHS, about 20% of all hate crimes reported throughout the country in 2021 were motivated by bias linked to sexual orientation and gender, citing the FBI’s hate crime statistics.
“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived — they are real, tangible and dangerous,” Kelley Robinson, the president of HRC, said in a statement.
She continued, “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”
(DAKAR, Senegal) — A group of soldiers declared a coup d’état in Gabon on Wednesday, claiming to have seized power from a president whose family has ruled the oil-rich Central African nation for decades.
The military junta made the announcement on state television hours after Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba won reelection for a third term in a vote that was criticized by international observers. A dozen uniformed soldiers, who introduced themselves as members of the Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions, described the election as fraudulent and said the results were “canceled,” all borders “closed until further notice” and state institutions “dissolved.”
“Our beautiful country, Gabon, has always been a haven of peace. Today, the country is going through a serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis,” the soldiers said in the televised statement. “In addition, irresponsible, unpredictable governance has led to a steady deterioration in social cohesion, threatening to drive the country into chaos. We call for calm and serenity among the population, the communities of sister countries settled in Gabon, and Gabonese living abroad. We reaffirm our commitment to respecting Gabon’s commitments to the national and international community.”
The coup leaders later issued another statement saying the president was under house arrest in his residence in the Gabonese capital of Libreville. Bongo, 64, became president of Gabon in 2009 following the death of his father, who had ruled since 1967.
Throngs of people took to the streets in Libreville on Wednesday to celebrate the apparent coup.
Sources told ABC News that internet service in Gabon was restored nationwide following the military takeover.
The U.S. Embassy in Libreville issued a security alert on Wednesday saying it “has received reports the borders and airport are currently closed and commercial flights to and from Libreville will reportedly be suspended until further notice.” U.S. citizens in the Gabonese capital were advised “to shelter in place, limit unnecessary movements around town, and continue to avoid transiting the downtown and Presidential Palace area.”
If successful, Gabon’s coup would be the eighth to occur in West and Central Africa since 2020. It comes about a month after a military junta in Niger ousted the West African nation’s democratically elected government. Both Niger and Gabon have close ties to France, their former colonizer.
Speaking to reporters in Paris on Wednesday, a French government spokesperson condemned the coup attempt in Gabon and said the government was following the situation closely.
Gabon, home to more than 2 million people, is located on the western coast of Central Africa, sharing borders with Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. The country is a member of OPEC, with a production of 181,000 barrels of crude per day.
(NEW YORK) — Russian state media has released rare footage showing Paul Whelan inside a notorious prison camp, providing the first publicly available video images of the imprisoned American in more than three years.
Broadcast on Monday, the recording shows Whelan, a Marine veteran, wearing a black uniform and hat among other inmates in what appear to be various areas within IK-17, a maximum-security penal colony in Mordovia — a remote, wooded region of Russia.
It was not clear when the video was taken but it comes amid continuing, high-level U.S. efforts to get him freed.
In one scene, Whelan works at a sewing machine and speaks to a reporter, telling him “Sir, you understand when I say I can’t do an interview, which means I can’t answer any questions.” Other shots show Whelan eating at a table and holding up what appears to be an identification card.
The news segment, aired by Russia Today (RT) — a state-funded propaganda outlet — also appears to show security camera footage of Whelan meeting with diplomats through a glass window.
Whelan’s twin brother David said in an interview with ABC News that Paul told his family that the video was recorded in May, that prison officials had attempted to force him to participate in the segment, and that they were angry “he had not played ball.”
“They retaliated against all they damaged a number of his personal possessions. They stole a number of items from his personal property,” David Whelan said, adding that his family had asked the local prosecutor to investigate.
Still, he said he was still grateful that he was able to catch a glimpse of his brother for the first time since his sentencing.
“Today was the first time I’ve seen what he really looks like since June 2020,” David Whelan said in an earlier email to ABC News.
In his interview with ABC, David Whelan added that he was heartened by how his brother appeared in the tape.
“He seems to look healthy when he stares down the camera at the end of the video. You can see his strength, and I think it’s contempt for the Russian propagandists,” David said. “I think seeing him has helped all of us realize that he’s resilient and we need to keep helping him so that so that he comes home.”
It’s unclear if Moscow intended to send any kind of message to the U.S. by allowing cameras inside the penal colony.
Negotiations aimed at freeing Whelan, who the U.S. considers to be wrongfully detained by Russia, have dragged on for years. In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that the administration had put forth what he called a “serious proposal” to Moscow for Whelan’s freedom, but sources familiar with negotiations say Russia has shown no real interest in the offer.
Blinken spoke with Whelan by phone earlier this month. Sources familiar with the call say the secretary reassured him that the U.S. was doing everything it could to bring him home.
“It was reassuring to see that he remains — and this is to use his brother’s words — ‘unbowed,'” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said about the video. “Paul continues to show tremendous courage, that does not change that his conservative circumstances are truly unacceptable, and we will continue to be very clear about that. Russia should release him immediately and that is something that again, we have been very consistent about.”
Whelan was arrested in 2018 and charged with espionage — allegations Whelan and the U.S. say are completely fabricated.
After spending 18 months in pre-trial detention, Whelan was convicted by a Russian court in June 2020.
He is currently one of two Americans considered by the U.S. government to be wrongfully jailed by Moscow. The other is Evan Gershkovich — a Wall Street Journal reporter accused of espionage, which the U.S. also denies.
Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(ST. PETERSBURG, Russia) — Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was buried in a private funeral on Tuesday, his press service said, nearly a week after he and nine others died in a plane crash in Russia.
Prigozhin, 62, was buried at the Prokhorov Cemetery of St. Petersburg in a closed funeral, his press service said on Telegram.
About 20 to 30 people attended the 40-minute “VIP” funeral, according to a cemetery employee. The attendees were all dressed in civilian clothes, with no military uniforms seen, and included relatives and close associates of Prigozhin, the employee said.
Prigozhin, a businessman who rose to become a powerful international paramilitary leader, was a former close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Kremlin spokesperson told reporters earlier Tuesday that Putin was not planning to attend Prigozhin’s funeral.
Prigozhin’s private plane mysteriously crashed on Aug. 23 near the town of Kuzhenkino, north of Moscow. DNA tests showed that the remains recovered from the site matched all 10 people on the passenger list, which included Prigozhin and Wagner Group co-founder Dmitry Utkin, Russian investigators said this week.
The crash may have been caused by an explosion on board the plane, perhaps by a well-placed bomb, U.S. officials told ABC News last week, describing their findings from an initial investigation.
There was no indication a surface-to-air missile was the cause of the crash, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The death of Prigozhin came exactly two months after he led a daylong mutiny against Moscow.
Wagner Group forces, which had been fighting in Ukraine, turned from their headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a key Russian city near the southern border, and marched toward the capital in the evening on June 23. Within a day, they had turned back.
Asked on Tuesday whether the U.S. believes Putin was behind the plane crash that killed Prigozhin, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre laid out the Kremlin’s “long history” of “killing its opponents,” before telling reporters it’s “pretty evident what happened here.”
The Kremlin has vehemently denied having any involvement in the plane crash.
“There has been a lot of speculation around this crash [and] the tragic deaths of the plane’s passengers, among them Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, the West presents all this speculation from a particular angle. All of that is sheer lies,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters last week.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the incident.
In a televised address a day after the crash, Putin said Prigozhin was a “man with a complex destiny, and he made serious mistakes in life.”
“He achieved the results he needed both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as in these last months,” Putin said.
ABC News’ Kevin Shalvey, Edward Szekeres and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Mehdi Yarrahi, a prominent Iranian pop singer, was arrested by Iranian authorities on Monday after releasing a song celebrating the anniversary of the Mahsa Amini protests coming up next month.
Iran said the “illegal song” was the reason for his arrest, according to the Mizan News Agency affiliated to the Islamic Republic judiciary stated on Monday.
“Take off your scarf, the sun is sinking,” the opening lyrics to the song reads. “Don’t be afraid, my love, laugh, protest against tears.”
Yarrahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, confirmed the arrest in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In an interview with Sharq Daily, Nili added that he did not know the charges nor the whereabouts of his client.
Yarrahi’s songs have been used as somewhat of a rallying cry in Iran since Mahsa Amini’s suspicious death in a hospital in Tehran on September 16 last year. Protests took on a life of their own after 22-year-old died while in police custody after being arrested for allegedly not fully complying with the strict mandatory hijab rules of the country.
Her death led to widespread protests across Iran, which activists have described to ABC News as “the most serious challenge” the government regime has faced in over four decades.
Iran Human Rights reported in April that at least 537 people had been killed since the start of the protests and at least 22,000 people have been arrested, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
“Dedicated to the noble women of my home and, who bravely shine in the front line of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement,” the dedication of his latest song, Roosarito, meaning “your headscarf,” reads.
Yarrahi’s arrest is yet another case of an increasing number of detentions and raids by the Islamic Republic over the past few weeks ahead of the first-year anniversary of the Mahsa Amini movement.
Just last Wednesday, at least 11 women’s rights activists were arrested by security forces in Iran in the northern province of Gilan Wednesday, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Another notable recent arrest arrest was of Mashallah Karami, whose son, Mohammad Mehdi Karami, was executed after attending recent protests. Karami published photos of preparing food that he and his wife had made to distribute among those in need to honor their son’s short life before getting executed by the regime.
Karami’s lawyer, Amir Hosein Koohkan, was also detained the same day and released later, just to be detained again on Monday.
Families of other protest victims in different cities have also reported news of arrests and harassment by the regime over the past few weeks.
(NEW YORK) — A United Nations committee strengthened a treaty on Monday on children’s rights in their fight against climate change, according to new guidance from the organization.
Countries should work to safeguard a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for children around the world as climate change becomes a growing issue, the U.N. said.
Children around the world are facing a systemic threat by a triple planetary crisis, consisting of the climate emergency, collapse of biodiversity and widespread pollution, the Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a report.
“The unsustainable extraction and use of natural resources, combined with widespread contamination through pollution and waste, have had a profound impact on the natural environment, fueling climate change, intensifying the toxic pollution of water, air and soil, causing ocean acidification and devastating biodiversity and the very ecosystems that sustain all life,” the committee said in its report.
Countries should also work to protect children’s rights from sudden harm and from future abuses of their rights stemming from not only their current actions but inaction, according to the committee.
“With its General Comment No. 26, the Committee on the Rights of the Child not only echoes and amplifies children’s voices, but also clearly defines the rights of children in relation to the environment that States Parties should respect, protect and fulfill collectively and urgently,” committee member Philip Jaffé said in the report.
Children from around the world have been leading the fight against the effects of climate change and have asked governments and businesses to ensure they have a safe future, according to Jaffé.
The committee said that children advocating for human rights and ecological protections, as well as their demands for a healthy environment, should be acknowledged.
The committee said the motivation behind the recent decision was in part due to a meeting in 2016 where 16,000 children from 121 countries took part in discussions on their rights and the environmental crisis.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said that the climate crisis is “a form of structural violence against children” that can lead to societal collapse within communities.
Some actions that countries should immediately take, according to the U.N. committee, include improving air quality by reducing both outdoor and household air pollution; guaranteeing access to safe water practices to prevent the spread of waterborne illnesses in children; and to phase out the use of coal and natural gases.
Earlier this month in the U.S., a group of young people from Montana won a major climate case after arguing the state failed to protect their right to a clean environment by continuing to use fossil fuels.
The ruling determined that a provision in Montana’s Environmental Policy Act violated the right to a clean environment, which is guaranteed under Montana’s state constitution, by promoting the continued use of fossil fuels.
“The climate crisis is a child rights crisis,” UNICEF Special Adviser on Advocacy for Child Rights and Climate Action Paloma Escudero said, according to the U.N.
“Every government has an obligation to protect the rights of every child in every corner of the planet, especially those boys and girls living in countries that have contributed least to this problem but are enduring the most dangerous floods, droughts, storms and heat,” Escudero said.
(DARWIN, Australia) — The Marine Corps on Monday identified the three Marines killed on Sunday when their Osprey aircraft crashed during a training exercise off the northern coast of Australia.
The MV-22B Osprey was carrying 23 service members when it went down at about 9:30 a.m. near the Tiwi Islands, in the Northern Territory of Australia, Marine officials said.
The three Marines killed were identified as:
Cpl. Spencer Collart, 21, of Arlington, Virginia
Capt. Eleanor LeBeau, 29, of Belleville, Illinois
Maj. Tobin Lewis, 37, of Jefferson, Colorado
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of three respected and beloved members of the MRF-D family. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families and with all involved,” said Col Brendan Sullivan, commanding officer of Marine Rotational Force-Darwin.
Three others Marines remain hospitalized, one in critical condition, according to a Marine press release.
The Osprey had been transporting troops as part of a “routine training exercise” in support of Exercise Predators Run, a joint military exercise, officials said.
Recovery and investigation efforts are ongoing, officials said. The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
Two days earlier, the Marine pilot of an F-18 Hornet died during a training flight near San Diego.
In June 2022, an Osprey crash killed five Marines in Glamis, California. A military investigation concluded an “unpreventable” mechanical failure caused the disaster.
Osprey aircraft are capable of tilting their rotors, allowing them to take off vertically, and go between flying like a helicopter to flying like a plane.
U.S. Army officials in April had ordered a 24-hour stand-down of all aviation units following two deadly mid-air helicopter collisions within 30 days.
ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Victoria Arancio and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(LONDON and AMSTERDAM) — Remains found after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private plane crashed last week were confirmed by genetic testing to be those of the Wagner Group leader, Russian investigators said on Sunday.
Ten people died when the jet fell from the sky near the town of Kuzhenkino, north of Moscow, on August 23.
DNA tests showed that the remains recovered from the site matched all 10 people on the passenger list, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Sunday. The remains “conform to the manifest,” committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.
“Molecular and genetic tests have been completed as part of the investigation of the plane crash in the Tver region. According to their finding, all ten victims have been identified. They fully match the list on the flight manifest,” the committee said in a statement to Interfax, the Russian newswire.
The crash may have been caused by an explosion on board the plane, perhaps by a well-placed bomb, U.S. officials told ABC News last week, describing their findings from an initial investigation.
The death of Prigozhin, a businessman who rose to become a powerful international paramilitary leader after entering Putin’s good graces, came exactly two months after he led a daylong mutiny against Moscow.
Wagner Group forces, which been fighting in Ukraine, turned from their headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a key Russian city near the southern border, and marched toward the capital in the evening on June 23. Within a day, they had turned back.
What followed were weeks of speculation about Prigozhin’s whereabouts.
He was first said to be taking refuge in neighboring Belarus under an agreement with Putin that had been brokered by that country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko. He was then said to have had a meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. A video posted before his death appeared to show him in Africa.
“I knew Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with a complex destiny, and he made serious mistakes in life,” Putin said in a televised address on Thursday. “He achieved the results he needed both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as in these last months.”
ABC News’ Anastasia Bagaeva contributed to this report.
(DARWIN, Australia) — At least three U.S. military personnel were killed on Sunday when a Marine helicopter crashed during a training exercise off the northern coast of Australia, U.S. officials said.
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey was carrying 23 service members when it went down at about 9:30 a.m. near the Tiwi Islands, in the Northern Territory of Australia, officials with the Marine Rotational Force-Darwin said in a statement.
Five other service members were taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital in serious condition, the statement said.
The Osprey had been transporting troops as part of a “routine training exercise” in support of Exercise Predators Run, a joint military exercise, officials said.
Recovery efforts were ongoing, officials said. The cause of the crash had not yet been determined.
U.S. Army officials in April had ordered a 24-hour stand-down of all aviation units following two deadly mid-air helicopter collisions within 30 days.
“The safety of our aviators is our top priority, and this stand-down is an important step to make certain we are doing everything possible to prevent accidents and protect our personnel,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said in a statement announcing the stand-down.
ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Victoria Arancio and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Latest headlines:
-Biden, Zelenskyy discuss weapons assistance, nuclear plant during phone call
-All reactors at power plant shut down for 1st time in history
-Zaporizhzhia ‘1 step away’ from emergency radiation: Ukraine nuclear agency head
-IAEA hopes to go to Zaporizhzhia plant ‘hopefully in the next few days’
-Russian missiles hit close to nuclear reactors: IAEA director
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Aug 28, 12:32 PM EDT
Russian missiles hit close to nuclear reactors: IAEA director
The shelling by Russia in recent days around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine landed close to two of the facility’s nuclear reactor buildings, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the IAEA, said Sunday that Russian rockets hit two “special buildings” about 100 meters, or less than 330 feet, from the nuclear reactor buildings.
Citing a report from Ukrainian officials, Grossi said the buildings hit in the attack house the facility’s water treatment plants, equipment repair shops or waste management facilities.
Grossi said there was damage to some water pipelines at the site but they have since been repaired. He said measurements of radioactivity were within normal range and there was no indication of any hydrogen leakage.
He said the nuclear plant, the largest in Europe, continues to access electricity from an off-site source after the plant temporarily lost connection to its last remaining operational 750 kilovolt external power line on Thursday.
Two reactor units that were disconnected from the electricity grid when power was cut to the plant on Thursday have been re-connected, Grossi said. The other four reactor units that were disconnected before Thursday remained shut down on Sunday.
He said the latest shelling once again underlines the risk of a potential nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is under the control of Russian forces but being operated by Ukrainian staff.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Aug 26, 3:28 PM EDT
IAEA hopes to go to Zaporizhzhia plant ‘hopefully in the next few days’
International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said he’s engaged in active consultations with all parties to lead and organize an IAEA mission to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “hopefully in the next few days.” Grossi said in a statement that Thursday’s sudden loss of external power showed that IAEA’s presence is urgently needed.
ABC News’ Alex Faul
Aug 26, 10:00 AM EDT
Zaporizhzhia ‘1 step away’ from emergency radiation: Ukraine nuclear agency head
The head of Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Petro Kotin, called Thursday’s disconnection of power lines at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, a “very serious deterioration… due to Russian shelling on the side of Nikopol on the side of the Dnipro river.”
The diesel generator operators were able to kick in during the disconnection, Kotin told ABC News on Friday.
Asked what’s the likelihood this would happen again, Kotin said, “This is one step from the emergency radiation, actually. Diesel is just the last defense, if you actually lose the diesel stuff, you already have radiation, and it’s out of the territory of the plant.”
He said there’d be 10 days of idle time before a meltdown if the diesel generators are working. If all diesel generators are down, it could be 1.5 hours.
Inspectors could gain access to the site in as soon as five days, he said.
For Russia, the Zaporizhzhia plant is a strategic stronghold as it seeks to control the ground pathway from occupied Donetsk to Crimea and onto Odesa.
Zaporizhzhia supplies Ukraine with around 20% of its energy.
Kotin reiterated that Russia intends to switch power to Russian-controlled areas.
ABC News’ Britt Clennett, Dada Jovanovic and Yuri Zalizniak
Aug 25, 4:27 PM EDT
All reactors at power plant shut down for 1st time in history
All of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where shelling has been ongoing, have been shut down for the first time in the plant’s history, Ukraine’s state nuclear regulator Energoatom reported.
Zaporizhzhia — the largest nuclear power plant in Europe — has six reactors, two of which are active, according to Ukraine’s state nuclear regulator, Energoatom. At 12:12 p.m. local time, the last operating line providing power to the plant was disconnected due to hostilities in the area, and as a result all six reactors were disconnected from the grid for 17 minutes, Energoatom said.
At 12:29 p.m. local time the overhead line was restored and reactors Nos. 5 and 6 start operating again.
At 2:14 p.m. local time, the overhead line was disconnected again, shutting down reactor No. 6 and leaving only reactor No. 5 operating. Work is underway to reconnect No. 6 to the grid.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the temporary shut down further shows “the urgent need for an IAEA expert mission to travel to the facility.”
If external power is lost there’s not active circulation of the water that cools the reactor and that could lead to a reactor meltdown. However, the plant “remained connected to a 330 kV line from the nearby thermal power facility that can provide back-up electricity if needed,” the IAEA said in a statement. “As a result of the cuts in the 750 kV power line, the ZNPP’s two operating reactor units were disconnected from the electricity grid and their emergency protection systems were triggered, while all safety systems remained operational.”
“There was no information immediately available on the direct cause of the power cuts,” the IAEA said. “The six-reactor ZNPP normally has four external power lines, but three of them were lost earlier during the conflict. The IAEA remains in close contact with Ukraine and will provide updated information as soon as it becomes available.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Thursday, “The world must understand what a threat this is: If the diesel generators hadn’t turned on, if the automation and our staff of the plant had not reacted after the blackout, then we would already be forced to overcome the consequences of the radiation accident. Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster.”
He called on the IAEA and other international organizations to act faster, “because every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster.”
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou, Fidel Pavlenko and Natalia Shumskaia
