Good morning. Welcome to Exxios today. It's Friday, March 4th. I'm Nyla Boudou. This morning,

Ukraine's President Zelinsky accuses Russia of nuclear terror. More than a weekend, what is Vladimir Putin's

endgame? Russia's escalation is today's one big thing.

Russian military shelling started a fire at Europe's largest nuclear power plant in southern

Ukraine overnight. That's according to Ukrainian officials. The fire was at a training building on

the perimeter of the facility and prompted late-night calls between Ukrainian President Zelinsky and

Western world leaders, including Joe Biden. The fires out, the nuclear plant appears safe,

but Russian forces have now seized control of the facility. In an emotional early morning video,

Zelinsky warned the world about Russian nuclear terror.

He's saying if there's an explosion, it's the end of everything, the end of Europe. This is the

evacuation of Europe. What's going on here? What do we know about the actual nuclear threat?

Exxios world editor Dave Lawler is with us. Dave, you've been working all hours of the night,

and I really appreciate you joining us this morning to break this down. Thanks for being here.

Good morning. Let's start with the fire at the plant. Everything's secure.

As far as we know, as you mentioned, there were these dramatic images overnight of fighting

happening right around this power plant, and then we got an image of a fire, which really did seem

an incredibly dangerous situation, and obviously is, but this was at a training facility.

There's no indication that radiation levels have increased. Right now, it does appear that

things are secure. Then overnight, after it seemed the fire was out, Russia seized control of this

facility. I should remind everybody that Russian forces have already also seized Chernobyl.

How different is taking over this facility? This facility was the largest power plant in

Europe. It was actively running. It wasn't the tomb of a nuclear facility as Chernobyl was,

...