Charisa Bossinakis
Ukraine has started handing out potassium iodine pills as fears that Russia will launch a nuclear attack mount.
NBC News reported that Kyiv’s city council recently began distributing anti-radiation pills at evacuation centres.
The pills can help prevent the absorption of harmful radiation via the thyroid gland when taken before or immediately after exposure to nuclear radiation.
The move comes after Europe’s largest power plant, Zaporizhzhia, was disconnected from Ukraine’s power for the first time in 40 years.
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Officials now fear the world’s biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl is on the cards.
Spokesman for the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration Volodymyr Marchuk told NBC News that the tablets were being also being handed out to residents who live within 30 miles (50 km) of the power plant Enerhodar.
Mr Marchuk has notified residents that the government would warn them when to take the tablets in case of a radiation leak.
Fears continue to grow that Vladimir Putin will resort to a devastating nuclear attack as he vowed he would use ‘all the powers and means at our disposal’ last week in his address, as per Al Jazeera.
The Russian President also announced the annexation of four major regions in Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia.
The Russian leader said he was not ‘bluffing’ about nuclear threats to gain control of the newly annexed regions.
He added: “I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia are becoming our citizens. Forever.
“We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table."
Putin added that the United States had created a ‘precedent’ by using nuclear weapons against Japan toward the end of World War II, implying that he would use the same force if pushed to the brink.
He said: “The United States is the only country in the world that has twice used nuclear weapons, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and setting a precedent."
He continued: “Even today, they actually occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and other countries, and at the same time cynically call them allies of equal standing.”