The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team inspected Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant for the first time on Thursday evening.
The “physical integrity” of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia occupied by the Russians “has been violated on several occasions”, denounced Thursday, after having inspected it, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, while President Volodymyr Zelensky reproached the IAEA for having concealed the question of the “demilitarization” of this site.
“We have no elements to assess this”, but “it is something that cannot continue to happen”, added Rafael Grossi, who is also at the head of a mission of experts whose , he underlined, several will remain until “Sunday or Monday” on the spot.
“We have a lot of work here”, in these installations which the Russians and the Ukrainians accuse each other of having bombed on numerous occasions, raising fears of a nuclear disaster, he again said to the media in Novooleksandrivka, a locality in the Zaporizhia region controlled by kyiv, on its return from the central, the largest in Europe.
According to the Russian news agency Interfax, four of the nine vehicles making up the convoy by which the IAEA team had arrived at the plant on Thursday afternoon had left in the early evening. The International Atomic Energy Agency also then intends to “establish a continuous presence” there, repeated its boss.
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“We were able to visit the whole site. I was in the units (of reactors, editor’s note), I saw the emergency system and other parts, the control rooms”, he listed, while praising the Ukrainian personnel still present at the plant which fell into the hands of Russian soldiers in March.
Zelensky wants to demilitarize the area
In his daily evening message, the Ukrainian head of state nevertheless felt that the IAEA should have gone further and insisted on the need, according to him, to “demilitarize” this area.
“The main thing that should happen is the demilitarization of the territory of the plant (…) And it is regrettable that we have not yet heard the appropriate messages from the IAEA”, thus dropped Mr. Zelensky.
And this “although we talked about it with Mr. Grossi during our meeting (Tuesday) in kyiv. It was the key, the key! The security point of our agreements: demilitarization and total control by our nuclear workers “of this complex, he hammered.
In the Ukrainian capital, the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for his part called for the interruption of all military operations around these installations, warning that an attack would be “catastrophic”.
“The slightest miscalculation could cause havoc that we would regret for decades,” warned Robert Mardini. One of the two reactors in operation at the plant has in this regard been stopped due to Russian strikes, the Ukrainian operator Energoatom regretted on Thursday. On the same day, the Ukrainian authorities assured that Russia was carrying out artillery fire on Energodar, the city where the Zaporizhia atomic complex is located, and on the road that the IAEA inspectors had to take to get there. .
For their part, the Russians claimed that the Ukrainians had sent “two groups of saboteurs” there during the night. The commandos “landed on board seven boats (…) three kilometers northeast of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and tried to take it”, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. He specified that the Russian army had taken “measures to annihilate the enemy, in particular by making use of aviation”.
The plant is located along the Dnieper, a river whose left bank is occupied, in this sector, by the Russians. These statements were unverifiable from an independent source.
Emmanuel Macron advocated the continuation of dialogue with Russia
In its evening report, the Ukrainian army general staff mentioned “massive shelling” in the vicinity of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, located in the northeast, of Zaporizhia, in the south, as well as Kramatorsk, Bakhmout and Sloviansk in the east.
On the other hand, it did not provide any information on the Ukrainian counter-offensive launched on Monday in certain southern areas, in particular around Kherson, one of the few large cities conquered by Russia.
The Russian army had assured on Wednesday that it had repelled the Ukrainian attacks there the two previous days, inflicting heavy losses on them.
In a report released Thursday, the NGO Human Rights Watch said that Russian troops had forcibly transferred Ukrainian civilians, including those fleeing hostilities, to areas under their control since the start of the invasion.
In Paris, Emmanuel Macron advocated the continuation of dialogue with Russia, judging that it was necessary “to assume that we can always continue to speak to everyone”, “especially those with whom we do not agree”.
The French president is one of the few European leaders to have spoken with President Vladimir Putin after the outbreak on February 24 of the Russian attack against Ukraine, a strategy that has been criticized. But Mr. Macron at the same time considered that “the division of Europe” was “one of Russia’s war aims”.