“Russian troops occupied the city of Energodar and the nearby Zaporizhzhya NPP at the beginning of March 2022”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“Experts of the Secretariat (IAEA) stay at the ZNPP at the request of the Director General (IAEA Raphael Grossi – ed.) only with the consent of the Government of the Russian Federation and only as long as our country considers their stay there to be justified. The task of specialists of the Agency’s Secretariat is to detect provocations against the station and its staff from the side of Ukraine,” Russian diplomats write.
Moscow reacted to the words of IAEA Secretary General Rafael Grossi regarding the prospects of a war that Russia is waging against Ukraine. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation did not like Grossi’s words in an interview with the German news agency DPA that the IAEA representatives will be at the nuclear power plant until the armed confrontation is frozen.
“It is absolutely unclear on what basis the leadership of the IAEA undertakes to judge the prospects of the infamous “freeze”, which clearly goes beyond its powers,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation emphasized.
Zaporizhzhia NPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Russian troops occupied the city of Energodar and the nearby Zaporizhzhya NPP at the beginning of March 2022.
The territory of the station is periodically subjected to shelling, for which Ukraine and Russia blame each other. The Ukrainian authorities also stated that the Russian army used the nuclear power plant to store military equipment and deploy its servicemen.