The bombings in recent days around the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, located on the outskirts of the city of Enerhodar, controlled by the Russians, have alerted the authorities of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations, whose general secretary, António Guterres, yesterday requested that international inspectors be allowed access to the largest nuclear plant in Europe. Hours later, the Russian representative to international organizations based in Vienna, such as the IAEA, stated that Moscow is willing to facilitate this visit.
Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of the attacks that took place last Friday and Saturday. Russian troops (about 500 soldiers, according to Ukrainian sources) have controlled the nuclear power plant since March, but Ukrainian technicians continue to work on it.
Russian occupation authorities accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out Friday's attack by firing several rockets, which damaged administrative buildings and an area near a warehouse. The Russian embassy in Washington also released a statement detailing the damage. “Ukrainian nationalists launched an artillery attack on the territory of the specified object on August 5. Two high-voltage power lines – from the plant's external supply – and a water pipe were damaged as a result (...) Only thanks to the effective and timely action of the Russian military (...) its critical infrastructure was not damaged. was affected," the embassy said. Yesterday, the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, said that the attacks "could have catastrophic consequences for a vast area, including the European territory" and that "we hope that the countries that have absolute influence over the Ukrainian leaders will use it to end to these bombings.
On the other side, according to Kyiv, Russian bombardments on Saturday damaged three radiation sensors and injured two workers. According to Enerhoatom, the state-owned company that owns the plant, the rockets hit the spent nuclear fuel storage facility. President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of "nuclear terror" and called for more international sanctions, this time on Moscow's nuclear sector. “There is no nation in the world that can feel safe when a terrorist state fires on a nuclear plant,” Zelensky denounced in a videotaped speech on Sunday.
Without naming anyone responsible, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, warned that "any attack on a nuclear plant is suicidal", and he did so at a press conference in Japan, within the framework of the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan. Hiroshima. Guterres called for Russia to allow staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the plant. Until researchers are allowed access to the site, neither side's version can be verified. "We fully support the IAEA in all its efforts in relation to creating the stabilization conditions for the plant," Guterres said. For his part, the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, warned that the bombings around the plant underline "the very real risk of a nuclear disaster" and insisted on the need for a mission to come to assess the conditions of security as soon as possible.
The director of Enerhoatom, Petró Kotin, went further, demanding that the plant be constituted a demilitarized zone and that peacekeepers be deployed there. “The decision that we ask the world community and all our partners (...) is to remove the invaders from the plant's territory and create a demilitarized zone (...) The presence of peacekeepers to take control control of the area, and also the control of the plant in Ukraine would solve the problem”, affirmed Kotin.
