UN agency says it was able to inspect Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

The UN’s atomic safety watchdog was able to inspect the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on Thursday, and said it would set up a “continued” presence at the site on the frontline of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A team led by Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, left Europe’s largest nuclear power station at about 6pm to return to Ukrainian-controlled territory, leaving five inspectors at the site, according to Energoatom, the Ukrainian operator of the facility. 

“I have just completed a first tour of the key areas that we wanted to see in this first approach to the whole facility,” Grossi said. “Of course, there is a lot more to do. My team is staying on and, more importantly and the most important thing, we are establishing a continued presence from the IAEA here,” he added.

The IAEA team’s inspection followed several tense hours in which the inspectors were held up in a front-line area as gunfire echoed from nearby battles. It comes as Russian president Vladimir Putin on Thursday suggested he aimed to end Ukraine’s existence in its current form by describing the nation as “an anti-Russian enclave . . . threatening our country.”

“So our guys who are fighting there are defending both the residents of Donbas,” an industrial region in eastern Ukraine now largely occupied by Russia, “and defending Russia itself”, Putin was quoted as saying by Interfax to a group of schoolchildren during a visit to Kaliningrad.

The IAEA mission at the sprawling nuclear site is expected to last several days and the agency has said it wants to set up a permanent team on the ground.

Russian forces occupied the site, Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, soon after Moscow’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February, marking the first time nuclear reactors have been at the centre of a major war.

Both Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused each other’s forces of conducting military strikes around the plant, triggering fears of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Ukraine, which has four operating nuclear power stations, is home to the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident while under Soviet control in 1986.

Earlier, a spokesperson for Grossi told the Financial Times that the IAEA mission had “been delayed on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the front line for some three hours”.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that “Russia shelled Energodar and the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant” as the mission was trying to approach.

“They want to disrupt the visit of the IAEA mission. These are the actions of a terrorist state afraid of the world learning the truth,” Yermak added.

Energoatom said on Thursday that Russian shelling had led it to shut down one of the only two operating reactors at the plant for the second time in 10 days. The plant has six reactors.

IAEA inspectors had set off from the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday morning on their way to Energodar. The mission arrived in Ukraine earlier this week after months of negotiations in which the IAEA sought to secure permission and security guarantees from both warring parties.

Ukraine and its western backers have repeatedly called on Russia to demilitarise the plant and return control to Kyiv. They have accused Russia of basing troops and equipment at the plant and using it as a shield while conducting artillery strikes.

The Moscow-based Interfax news agency, citing Russia’s defence ministry, reported on Thursday that a Ukrainian “sabotage group” travelling in boats across the Dnipro river had been destroyed by a helicopter attack after disembarking near the facility.

Russia’s Tass news agency, citing Alexander Volga, installed by Russian occupation forces as the head of Energodar, said the city was without power on Thursday.

Russian and Ukrainian military claims could not be independently verified.