(Reuters) – Russia has given UN inspectors hope they can visit the site of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant that has come under fire.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday that Russia would do “everything necessary” to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit the country. The representative of Russia at the IAEA, Mikhail Ulyanov, added that a visit by experts from the UN agency to the nuclear power plant in the war zone in south-eastern Ukraine could be organized in the near future. But there are still obstacles. Ulyanov did not say what these are. The absolute security of the international mission is paramount.
Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russian troops have occupied the power plant since early March, but Ukrainian technicians are still operating it. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked Russia to return control of the nuclear power plant to his country. According to the Ukrainian military, the Russian troops are using the nuclear power plant as a protective shield because an attack there is impossible. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week called for an end to hostilities in the area around the nuclear power plant.
The issue was also the subject of a session of the UN Security Council, in which Russia has the right of veto. The Russian ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Wassily Nebensya, recently said that the world was “on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe”, comparable to the worst case scenario in Chernobyl in Ukraine in April 1986.
(Reuters report, edited by Elke Ahlswede. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at [email protected])