Zelensky announces Ukraine's participation in the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday that his country will participate in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit scheduled to be held on July 7 and 8, 2026, in the Turkish capital Ankara.

This came at a joint press conference held by Zelensky, in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, after meeting with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who is visiting Ukraine on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Zelensky pointed out that the new security envelope protecting the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant was built with the cooperation of 40 countries, pointing out that a Russian drone hit it last year.

The Ukrainian president called on the international community to take action to prevent Russian attacks on nuclear facilities,  recalling that in 2022, Russian forces took control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as well as the Chernobyl plant for a short time before being forced to withdraw in the face of Ukrainian military strikes.

Zelensky said that Russia's occupation of the Chernobyl plant in 2022 and its use as a military starting point shows that it has learned nothing from the mistakes of the past.

At the end of his remarks, he announced that Ukraine will be represented at the NATO summit that Turkey will host in Ankara next July .

What is the Chernobyl plant?

Chernobyl is a nuclear power plant built in 1970 and is located near the Ukrainian city of Prabit, 18 km northwest of the now-abandoned city of Chernobyl, located in the Kyiv region.

The reactor witnessed the largest nuclear disaster known to the world, which occurred on April 26, 1986, where a large explosion occurred at night caused by the melting of the reactor core as a result of its very high temperature resulting from technical errors committed by the workers on duty tonight.

The force of the explosion blew up the roof of the reactor, which weighs 2,000 tons of steel, and the equivalent of 8 tons of nuclear fuel was launched into the sky, after which rescue teams intervened to extinguish the fire, which was unaware of the leakage of dangerous materials such as uranium, plutonium, cesium, and iodine, which resulted in their exposure to dangerous levels of radiation that reached thousands of times the normal level, and caused the death of 36 people, most of them firefighters and plant workers.

The area around the station, about 30 km in diameter, has been declared a no-go zone unfit for permanent human habitation. Experts estimate that radiation levels will keep it uninhabited for thousands of years, although limited visits are allowed for scientific research or organized tourism.

Although some reactors continued to operate after the disaster, international pressure and environmental concerns led to the closure of Reactor No. 3 for good in 2000, and the plant has since entered a long-term shutdown phase that includes gradual dismantling and radioactive disinfection. This process is one of the most complex nuclear shutdowns in the world due to the scale of the contamination and the complexity of the site's engineering structure.

Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe's Largest Nuclear Power Plant

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, built in the Soviet era near the city  of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine, with six reactors with a total capacity of about 5,700 megawatts, and before the war produced about 20% of Ukraine's electricity.

Since March 2022, the plant has been under Russian control and effectively operated by Rosatom, although its legal ownership remains in the hands of the Ukrainian company "Energoatom", making it the first major nuclear plant to operate within an active war zone, raising rising international concerns about its safety.

The plant has since  suffered  a series of complete power outages that exceeded 15, the  latest  of which was yesterday, Sunday, April 26, 2026, forcing it to rely on backup diesel generators to ensure cooling of the reactors, and Ukrainian authorities assert that each outage raises the possibility of a nuclear accident that could have an impact on Europe.