Ukraine could be just "one step away" from armageddon-like atomic disaster if Vladimir Putin's rockets and drones continue to hit nuclear power plants, the country's energy minister has warned. On Saturday, Ukraine remembered the brave souls who fought to contain nuclear fallout from one of the world's worst nuclear power station meltdowns at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986.

Chernobyl, and the radioactive exclusion zone that surrounds it 39 years on, lies just 60 miles north from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. It remains a chilling reminder of the devastation an atomic incident can cause, and President Zelensky paid tribute to Ukrainians who lost their lives sealing the reactor at the power plant, which Ukrainians know as Chornobyl.

Posting on X, he wrote: "We honour the courage and selflessness of the thousands of people who protected Ukraine and all other countries from the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster.

He added: "It is called an 'accident,' but the implication is far greater. The explosion at the fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant contaminated countries thousands of kilometres away from the epicentre with radioactive elements. The consequences could have been much more catastrophic had it not been for our people."

But the danger for Ukraine's nuclear industry is not coming from a civilian accident, it's threatened by increasingly dangerous Russian drone and missile attacks on atomic power plants across the country.

Ukrainian energy minister, German Galushchenko, told the Telegraph: “Russia has been attacking the substations supplying independent cooling power to the nuclear station. So when there is destruction of these power supplies, the nuclear units go into an emergency shutdown regime.

“The electricity for cooling then has to be supplied by a reserve diesel generator – but this is dangerous [because reserve generators can fail]. We have been one step short of a nuclear meltdown many times now.”

Ukraine has four nuclear power plants with around 15 working reactors, as well as stockpiles of used fuel rods and radioactive waste.

Three of the power plants are still in Ukrainian control, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne, which are in the west of the country, and Odesa Nuclear Power Station, which sits close to the city it is named after, in the south of the country.

The fourth nuclear power station is Zaporizhzhia, which is the largest atomic energy producing facility in Europe and amongst the top ten largest in the world.

Russia now control Zaporizhzhia and the site has been dangerously close to front line fighting between the Ukrainians and Kremlin forces.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees safety at nuclear plants all over the world, has issued dire warnings about Zaporizhzhia and the power plant near Odessa after Russia drone strikes reportedly punched holes in the structure of both facilities, potentially sparking dangerous radioactive incidents.

On Thursday, Rafael Grossi, the IAEA director general, issued a further warning saying: “What was once virtually unimaginable, evidence of military action in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility, has become a near daily occurrence and a regular part of life at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant,” he said.

“From a nuclear safety perspective, this is clearly not a sustainable situation. We are doing everything we can to prevent a nuclear accident during this tragic war.”