International monitors staying behind at a Russian-occupied atomic plant in Ukraine will evaluate how continued military attacks against the facility risk a nuclear accident.
(Bloomberg) — International monitors staying behind at a Russian-occupied atomic plant in Ukraine will evaluate how continued military attacks against the facility risk a nuclear accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency left two teams at the Zaporizhzhia plant. One will stay through Sunday and conduct a detailed analysis on safety and security at Europe’s biggest nuclear power station. A second team will remain as a “resident expert presence” that can provide a neutral assessment of future events, agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said late Thursday.
It’s the first time in the IAEA’s 65-year history that monitors crossed an active battlefront in order to carry out an inspection.
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Key Developments
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On the Ground
Ukraine continued artillery attacks on Russian reserves, control centers and transport inside occupied territories. An ammunition depot near an airfield in Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia was targeted, said Mayor Ivan Fedorov. Russian forces struck military and civilian targets in the east and south of Ukraine with artillery, missiles and aviation bombs. Four civilians were reported killed and 10 wounded in Donetsk region as of this morning.
(All times CET)
Long-Term Presence of Inspectors Is Needed at Zaporizhzhia Plant, IAEA Says (9:27 a.m.)
IAEA’s inspectors arrived at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on after a harrowing journey across the frontline separating Ukrainian and Russian forces. The sounds of heavy machine gun fire, artillery and mortars accompanied them during the crossing, Grossi said late Thursday.
“It is obvious that the plant and the physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times,” the Argentine diplomat said en route back to Vienna. A long-term presence is needed because inspectors currently “don’t have the elements to assess” whether one side or the other was deliberately targeting the plant, he said.
Johnson Urges Plant’s Return to Ukrainian Control (8:27 a.m.)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Zaporizhzhia plant should “return as soon as possible in Ukrainian hands.”
Asked about a Ukrainian offensive in the Kherson area, Johnson said in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica he was hoping and praying that the Ukrainians would manage to expel Russians from occupied territories.
Zelenskiy Says Russia Did All It Could to Foil IAEA Mission (10:10 p.m.)
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russian occupiers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are “trying to turn the really necessary IAEA mission into a fruitless tour of the station.”
“Russia did many cynical things to deceive” the inspectors, Zelenskiy said in his daily video statement, including allowing in “Russian propagandists” but not Ukrainian and international reporters. “It is bad that we so far have not heard calls from the IAEA” to demilitarize the territory of the station, he said.
But Grossi said his team of IAEA monitors collected important information during the visit and he had access to the “key things” he wanted to see, BBC Ukraine reported.
US Demands ‘Unfettered Access’ for IAEA at Nuclear Plant (7:48 p.m.)
The US is calling on Russia to let inspectors from the IAEA stay as long as needed to inspect the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
“It’s important that those inspectors are given unfettered access and allowed to do their job — and to stay as long as they need to stay to be able to report back,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power.”
Kirby also said Russia is grappling with maintaining a sizable and motivated army, after suffering significant causalities in its six-month-long invasion.
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