Russia, by shelling and seizing nuclear facilities in Ukraine, is increasing the risk of a worldwide nuclear disaster every day, Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko said.

"Every day since February 24, the world has teetered on the brink of a disaster that will be much worse than Chornobyl and Fukushima combined," he wrote in an address to international organizations and institutions on his Facebook page on Monday.

He said that after the capture of the site of Chornobyl nuclear power plant (ChNPP) on February 24, then the shelling and capture of Zaporizhia nuclear power plant on March 4, the enemy fired on Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology on March 6, where an experimental nuclear installation is located. This indicates that the Russian military did not draw any conclusions about the danger of hostilities against nuclear facilities, and the only reliable way to avoid a nuclear disaster is to establish an unmanned zone over Ukraine, the head of the Energy Ministry said.

"A nuclear war can start even without launching nuclear missiles (...) I appeal to international institutions and organizations with a request to apply all their capabilities and efforts and establish an unmanned zone over Ukraine, before a disaster happens," Haluschenko said.

Later, he said that, together with Head of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate Oleh Korikov and Head of the NNEGC Energoatom Petro Kotin, in a letter dated March 5, he addressed President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen with a demand to create a special EC mission to study the state of affairs at the captured Chornobyl and Zaporizhia NPP.

"Another important goal of the mission should be to establish and document (fact finding) all crimes of Russian military aggression that threaten the safe operation of nuclear facilities in Ukraine," the minister said.