United Nations inspectors arrived in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday on a mission to prevent an accident at a nearby Russian-occupied nuclear power plant and to try to stabilize the situation after weeks of shelling in the vicinity.
A Reuters reporter following the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team in a convoy from the capital Kyiv said inspectors would likely spend the night in the city before visiting the plant on Thursday, which is in territory controlled by Russia.
Officials stationed by Russia in the area near the plant suggested the visit could last only one day, while IAEA and Ukrainian officials suggested it would last longer.
“The mission will take several days. If we are able to establish a permanent presence, or a continued presence, then it will be extended. But this first segment will last several days,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi . journalists in a hotel in Zaporizhzhia.
Before leaving Kyiv, Grossi had told reporters that the team was “going to a war zone” and had received “explicit guarantees” of access from both the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shortly after launching their invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and is close to the front lines. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
The prospects for demilitarization at the site are unclear
Russia seized the plant, Europe’s largest, in early March as part of what Moscow calls its “special military operation,” which Kyiv and the West have described as an unprovoked invasion designed to grab land and wipe out Ukrainian identity.
A Russian military force has been at the plant since then, with a Ukrainian workforce continuing to operate the facility, which traditionally supplied Ukraine with 20 percent of its electricity needs.
Fighting was reported near the power plant and further afield, with Kyiv and Moscow claiming battlefield successes as Ukraine mounted a counteroffensive to retake territory in the south. Reuters could not independently verify these reports.
The United States has called for a complete shutdown of the plant and has asked for a demilitarized zone around it.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galuschenko said Thursday that the IAEA’s inspection was a step toward the “decommissioning and demilitarization” of the site. Russia has said it has no intention of withdrawing its forces at this time.
Asked about plans for a demilitarized zone at the plant, Grossi said it was a matter of political will and that his team was on a technical mission, with a top priority being able to talk to Ukrainian technicians who they manage the plant.
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The UN nuclear energy team will visit the Ukrainian plant this week
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency will inspect Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as fears persisted that fighting in the vicinity could cause a radiation leak.
The gas supply was stopped
Away from Ukraine, Russia halted gas supplies through Europe’s key supply route on Wednesday, intensifying an economic battle between Moscow and Brussels that could lead to recession and energy rationing in some of the richest countries of the region.
European Union foreign ministers decided on Wednesday to make it more expensive and time-consuming for Russians to obtain visas to visit the bloc, but fell short of an EU-wide visa ban they had wanted some member states.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, in a late-night speech on Tuesday, said Ukrainian forces were attacking Russian positions in Ukraine along the entire front line in an offensive to try to retake the south. Zelenskyy said his forces were also on the offensive in the east.
Russia captured large swathes of southern Ukraine near the Black Sea coast in the first weeks of the six-month war, including the Kherson region, which lies north of the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.
Ukraine sees the recapture of the region as crucial to preventing Russian attempts to seize more territory further west that could eventually cut off its access to the Black Sea.
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Britain, an ally of Ukraine, said Ukrainian formations in the south had pushed back front-line Russian forces in some places, taking advantage of relatively thin Russian defenses.
Ukraine said it had “successes” in three areas of the region, but declined to give details.
Russia’s defense ministry has denied reports of Ukrainian progress and said its troops had defeated Ukrainian forces.
Away from Ukraine, European Union foreign ministers agreed on Wednesday to completely suspend a visa facilitation deal with Russia, making it harder and more expensive for Russian citizens to enter the EU, the head of bloc’s foreign policy, Josep Borell.
Diplomats told the EU that ministers could not immediately agree a blanket ban on travel visas for Russians as member states were divided on the issue.
Ukraine’s allies have accused Russia of using energy as a weapon in retaliation for Western sanctions. Moscow denies doing so and cites technical reasons for the supply cuts, but the reduction in energy supplies is one of the factors that has seen euro zone inflation reach significant levels, including a rate of 9.1% for August in a report released Wednesday.