KYIV: The UN atomic watchdog chief arrived at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Wednesday in a rare visit to Europe’s largest atomic facility, now controlled by the Russian forces.
There are continued fears over the nuclear plant’s safety in the southern Zaporizhzhia area, where there has been frequent shelling since Russian forces invaded last year.
The nuclear power operator Energoatom in Ukraine and Russian news agencies announced on social media that the International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Rafael Grossi had arrived with his delegation.
Energoatom distributed footage of a convoy of military and civilian vehicles marked with the letter Z, a symbol emblazoned on Russian military hardware in Ukraine.
Rafael Grossi’s visit to nuclear plant
“Raphael Grossi plans to observe how the situation at the ZNPP has changed, talk to the nuclear engineers at the plant, and act as a guarantor of the members’ rotation of the IAEA permanent mission,” it mentioned on social media.
This is Rafael’s second visit to Zaporizhzhia since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The visit aims to “assess first-hand the serious nuclear security and safety situation at the locality,” the IAEA said.
The IAEA has had a team of experts inside the plant since September last year; however, Grossi has said the situation “is still precarious.”
A couple of days before, Grossi met with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who said it was impossible to restore safety at the plant with control from Russia, adding that restoring safety and security would require immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the plant.
An advisor to Russia’s Rosenergoatom, Renat Karchaawhich, who runs the facility, stated before the said visit that it would unlikely bring about any major breakthroughs or change.
“We are far from having any illusions that IAEA Chief’s visit will dramatically change anything as it was an ordinary working event for us,” he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
He added that the plant needed a reliable electricity supply to ensure essential nuclear security and safety functions, so anything could happen.
But it has suffered repeated electricity breakdowns during the war, causing alarm in the IAEA and the international community.
The Russian invasion has caused devastation across different parts of the country, and despite over 13 months of grueling battles, Ukraine’s top diplomat struck a defiant tone on Tuesday.
“Russia has to withdraw from every inch of Ukrainian territory,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba remarked in a virtual session before the Summit for Democracy, which US President Joe Biden would formally kick off on Wednesday.
In the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, fighting in recent months has been concentrated and confined to the eastern city of Bakhmut, with Kyiv saying it is holding out in the urban hub to exhaust Russian forces.
On Tuesday, Russia said it had downed a long-range rocket supplied by the US to Ukraine for the first time.
These devices range up to 150 kilometers (93 miles), which may threaten Russian positions and supply depots far behind the front lines.
Since the invasion, over 850 health facilities in Ukraine have been attacked, according to the World Health Organization, creating a massive gap in health and emergency services.
