UN inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after being delayed for several hours by conflicting reports of shelling around Europe’s biggest atomic facility.
Rafael Grossi, the chief international nuclear inspector, said he saw “the key things I needed to see” and his team was able to gather “a lot of information” during the long-awaited visit. “We have achieved something very important today and the important thing is the IAEA is staying here – let the world know that the IAEA is staying at Zaporizhzhia,” Grossi said in a video from Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.
The plant’s operator, Energoatom, said Grossi had left the site. Five IAEA representatives would remain, probably until Saturday. Grossi said his team would maintain a “continued presence”.
Energoatom said early on Thursday that it had activated emergency procedures and shut down one of the facility’s two working reactors “as a result of another mortar shelling by Russian … forces at the site”. Ukrainian authorities are making “all efforts” to switch the plant’s fifth reactor back on, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear company said later.
The Red Cross issued an urgent call for an end to all military operations around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, warning the consequences of a strike could be “catastrophic”. It was “high time to stop playing with fire and instead take concrete measures” to protect the plant from any military operations, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Robert Mardini, said. The stakes were “immense”, he added.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, accused Moscow of trying to wreck the inspection of the nuclear facility, saying Russia was acting like a terrorist state. “It is Russia that is responsible for everything happening at the plant,” he said.
Russia claimed it repulsed an attempt by Ukrainian forces to sabotage or retake the plant. It said a small number of Ukrainian troops launched two amphibious attacks. It also alleged that Ukrainian fire came within 400 metres of the plant.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said: “We are doing everything to ensure that this station is safe, that it functions safely. And for the mission there to carry out all its plans.”
