IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi visited Belarus to inspect the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant (BelNPP), having a meeting with Aleksandr Lukashenko on October 1, 2024, who mentioned that Ukrainian media were reporting on his supposed plans to seize the Chornobyl NPP. The conversation was later aired on the state-run TV channel “Belarus 1” in a segment called “Anti-Fake” on the “Panorama” program.
“In recent times, our Ukrainian colleagues and friends in the media outlet have been devoting a lot of time and space to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, conveying this information to you that we, allegedly Lukashenko, want to capture the Chornobyl plant,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
Ukrainian media did indeed report on the alleged capture of the Chornobyl NPP by Belarus, but only after the meeting, covering Lukashenko's statement.
“Lukashenko expressed bewilderment regarding the spread of fake news about the seizure of the Chornobyl NPP. <...> Ukrainian officials did not confirm the information that Lukashenko referred to,” Ukraine’s “Television News Service” reported on October 1, 2024.
In the segment from the state-run TV “Belarus 1,” titled “Who Needs Fake Claims About the Seizure of Chernobyl NPP?”, political analyst Yevgeny Gorin stated that “the fake news about attempts to seize the Chernobyl station to carry out, for example, a terrorist act, has been circulating online since 2022.” This was backed up with news segments published in 2022. At the very outset of the large-scale war, after gaining control of Chornobyl NPP, Russia was asserted to be leaving the territory as a gesture of goodwill. However, those publications did not mention Aleksandr Lukashenko; instead, they accused Vladimir Putin of the station's seizure.
At the end of the questioned “Belarus 1” segment, the audience was shown a screenshot of another article titled “Ukraine May Initiate Sabotage at Chornobyl NPP”. Gorin provided commentary off-screen:
“...and forces, for example, the spread of fake news in early September about provocations being prepared on the territory of the Chornobyl Radioecological Biosphere Reserve, with the blame being placed on opponents. And so on, and so forth. Apparently, we will hear many more scenarios created by the CIPO [Ukrainian Center for Information and Psychological Operations — ed.], aimed at Western audiences and organizations like the IAEA.”
The article Gorin referred to was published by the Russian online resource “Reporter” on October 2, a day after Aleksandr Lukashenko spoke about the supposed Ukrainian fakes.
The publication mentioned above provides a list of accusations against Belarus and Russia allegedly from Ukraine. However, it does not contain any mentions, quotes, the persons who put them forward, as well as the references to the Ukrainian media outlets that allegedly disseminated these accusations.
The WTF team did not find any media content confirming the existence of fake news about the seizure of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.
