Staff at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant were captured on video pleading with Russian soldiers directing fire on the building before they overtook it this week.
Ukrainian authorities released footage from inside the control room of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that shows an announcer begging Russian soldiers to stop shooting at the plant.
'Stop shooting at a nuclear dangerous facility. Stop shooting immediately! You threaten the security of the whole world!' the announcer said in a video sent to The New York Times by a source with ties to the local government.
'The work of the vital organs of the Zaporizhzhia station may be disrupted. It will be impossible for us to restore it,' the announcer continues.
'You are endangering the security of the entire world. Attention! Stop shooting at a nuclear hazardous facility. Stop shooting at a nuclear hazardous facility! Stop shooting at a nuclear hazardous facility! Attention! Stop it!'
The nuclear power plant, which creates around 20 percent of Ukraine's electricity, was attacked in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Russian President Vladimir Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-story training building just outside the main complex. Moscow's men then stopped firefighters from getting to the building for several hours.
Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames at the Zaporizhzhia plant before Russian troops moved in and occupied the site.
The United Nation's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal. Three Ukrainian troops were killed defending the complex, Kyiv said.
Shortly before midnight on Friday it was tweeted that the power plant was back under Ukrainian control but the Ukrainian government has not provided an official update verifying the information.
Footage from inside the control room of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant show the scene as an announcer begs Russian soldiers to stop shooting at the plant
'Stop shooting at a nuclear dangerous facility. Stop shooting immediately! You threaten the security of the whole world!' an announcer could be heard saying in the clip from inside the plant
A man stands inside the control room of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as an announcer tries to reason with Russian troops shooting at it
The computers inside the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant control room. Footage from Friday captured an announcer attempting to convince Russian forces to yield
A projectile (the bright light, bottom left) lands in a car park at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, damaging cars in the area
Fire-damaged buildings at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear complex are pictured on Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian forces overnight, leading to international condemnation
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has slammed Putin's troops for seizing the power plant as he urged Russian citizens to remember the 'catastrophic' Chernobyl disaster.
Nuclear experts warned the attacks were 'frightening' but that any disaster caused by fighting would be similar to Fukushima in 2011 rather than Chernobyl in 1986.
Fukushima, in Japan, melted down after a tsunami cut electricity to the plant, disabling its cooling system. Chernobyl exploded after a training exercise-gone-wrong caused an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
In 2011, a 33 foot-high tsunami that killed nearly 19,000 people crashed into Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. This led to several meltdowns, allowing harmful radioactive fuel rods and debris to escape from contained areas.
Approaching a decade after the disaster, researchers are still struggling to clean up fuel in the waters of the wasting reactors.
It's estimated that plant officials have only located 10 percent of the waste fuel left behind after the nuclear meltdowns.
Russian armoured vehicles and troops attacked the nuclear power plant in the early hours of Friday, shooting and shelling guards holed up in administrative buildings near the nuclear reactors - setting one of them on fire
Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the UN's nuclear energy watchdog, outlines where the building that caught fire was in relation to the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia
Zaporizhzhia has six nuclear reactors, making it the largest of its kind in Europe, and accounts for about one quarter of Ukraine's power generation. One report said the fire was about 150 meters away from one of the reactors
And the damaged plant is believed to be leaking small amounts of the radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean, which could be travelling as far as the west coast of the United States.
The Zaporizhzhia attack has been internationally condemned, with French President Emmanuel Macron expressing alarm about 'the risks to nuclear safety' while the US ambassador to the UN slammed the advance as a dangerous escalation that 'represents a dire threat to all of Europe and the world'.
The attack on the plant comes as Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement, before Vladimir Putin went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for 'total victory' while he spouted propaganda that Russia's forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the 'special operation' is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.
Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian 'saboteurs' while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.
In another denial, Putin, speaking on a call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, dismissed all reports of Russian attacks on apartment buildings, schools and hospitals as 'fake' - a day after going on TV to accuse Ukrainians of using civilians as 'human shields' while vowing not to back down from his attack.
As he spoke, emergency services in Ukraine warned that around 100 people could be buried in rubble after a rocket strike cleaved an apartment in the city of Boradyanka - 30 miles
