Nuclear power plant attack ‘war crime’: US Embassy

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) -   The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said that attacking a nuclear power plant is a war crime on Friday after Russia seized a Ukrainian nuclear facility that is the biggest in Europe.  
The statement on the embassy’s Twitter account went further than any U.S. characterization of Russia’s actions in Ukraine since it launched its invasion on Feb. 24.  

“It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,” U.S. Embassy Kyiv said in its post.  

Russian invasion forces seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant on Friday in heavy fighting in southeastern Ukraine, triggering global alarm, but a huge blaze in a training building has been extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe.  

Russia’s defense ministry blamed a fire at the plant on a “monstrous attack” by Ukrainian saboteurs and said its forces were in control.