IAEA inspectors are expected Thursday at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant for a high-risk mission, Ukraine accusing the Russian army of bombing the area, while Moscow accuses Kyiv of having sent a team of ” saboteurs”.
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The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi, who leads a team of 14 experts, assured that the mission to the central controlled by the Russian army was maintained despite the violence.
“We are not stopping, we are moving,” he told reporters on Thursday morning before the team’s departure from the town of Zaporizhia, located about 120 km from the plant.
“We will immediately begin assessing the security situation at the plant,” he added.
The IAEA wants to establish a “permanent” presence in this power station in southern Ukraine to avoid a possible nuclear disaster.
In Kyiv, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross called for a halt to all military operations around the plant, warning that an attack would be “catastrophic”.
“It is high time to stop playing with fire and instead take concrete action to protect this site,” Robert Mardini told reporters. “The slightest miscalculation could wreak havoc that we would regret for decades,” he warned.
The two belligerents have accused each other for weeks of endangering the security of this nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
A reactor in Zaporizhia has been shut down due to Russian bombing, Ukrainian nuclear power plant operator Energoatom said on Thursday that one of the plant’s six reactors continues to operate.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of carrying out artillery strikes on Energodar, the city where the Zaporijjia power plant is located.
“The Russians are carrying out artillery strikes on the route by which the IAEA mission must go to the power plant,” accused the exiled mayor of Energodar, Dmytro Orlov, on Telegram.
For its part, the Russian army accused Ukrainian troops of having sent “two groups of saboteurs”.
The commandos reportedly “landed on board seven boats (…) three kilometers northeast of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and attempted to take the plant,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
He specified that the Russian army had taken “measures to annihilate the enemy, in particular by making use of military aviation”.
The plant is located along the Dnieper River, the left bank of which is controlled in this sector by Russian troops.
These statements were unverifiable from an independent source.
The Russian Ministry of Defense also accused the Ukrainian army of having carried out artillery fire on the “rendezvous point” of the IAEA mission near the nuclear power plant.
An official of the Russian occupation administration in the Zaporizhia region, Vladimir Rogov, for his part accused Ukraine of having bombed Energodar, killing three civilians and wounding one.
On the ground, the Ukrainian army is continuing its counter-offensive in the south of the country, in particular around Kherson, one of the few major Ukrainian cities conquered by Russia.
The Russian army, however, assured on Wednesday that it had repelled the Ukrainian offensives over the past two days, inflicting heavy losses on the Ukrainians.
In a report released Thursday, the NGO Human Rights Watch said Russian forces have forcibly transferred Ukrainian civilians, including those fleeing hostilities, to areas under their control since the start of the Russian invasion.
In Paris, Emmanuel Macron advocated the continuation of dialogue with Russia, believing 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 Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, a strategy that has been criticized.
But Emmanuel Macron at the same time estimated, during a speech before the French ambassadors at the Élysée, that “the division of Europe is one of Russia’s war aims” in Ukraine.
In another parallel war, that of gas, the Russian giant Gazprom declared on Wednesday that it had “entirely” suspended its supply from Europe via the Nord Stream gas pipeline due to maintenance work expected to last three days.
As other European countries, notably Germany and France, work to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, Hungary announced on Wednesday an agreement with Gazprom to receive additional deliveries.
On the diplomatic field, the foreign ministers of the EU states agreed on Wednesday to suspend a 2007 agreement with Russia facilitating the reciprocal issuance of short-stay visas.
“It’s a ridiculous decision that is part of a series of absurdities,” reacted the Kremlin on Thursday.