UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asked Russia on Friday not to cut the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which it controls and which kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of threatening with their bombings, from the Ukrainian network.
In the East, the fighting continues, particularly in the Donbass, a priority strategic objective for Moscow that its forces continue to pound and where 5 dead have been recorded in the past 24 hours in the province of Donetsk alone, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
Mr. Guterres continued Friday in Odessa, the great port of southern Ukraine, his visit to the country which had first led him the day before to Lviv (west).
He asked Russia not to cut the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant from the Ukrainian electricity network, which has been controlled by Russian troops since the beginning of March and whose security is worrying because it is close to the war front.
“Of course, Zaporizhia’s electricity is Ukrainian electricity. […] this principle must be fully respected,” Mr. Guterres told a press conference on the sidelines of a visit to the port of Odessa.
Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian power plant operator Energoatom said it feared that Russia would cut the power plant from the Ukrainian power grid.
According to Energoatom, the Russian military is seeking supplies for diesel generators that would be activated after the reactors are shut down and have restricted personnel access to the site.
Moscow and kyiv have accused each other in recent weeks of bombings that have targeted this nuclear power plant located in southern Ukraine, raising the specter of a major disaster in Europe, 36 years after that of Chernobyl, also in Ukraine.
A Western diplomat told AFP on Friday that Westerners were most worried about maintaining the water cooling of nuclear reactors, more than the impact of a shot on this plant “built to withstand” the worst impacts, ” even to the crash of an airliner”.
“Suicide”
Thursday in Lviv, where he met Ukrainian Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he feared a “new Chernobyl”, believing that “any potential damage to Zaporijjia would be suicide”.
“Seriously concerned”, he had called for the demilitarization of the plant to prevent it from being used “for any military operation whatsoever”.
On Thursday, the Russian army strongly denied having deployed “heavy weapons” in and around the plant, as kyiv accused.
The pro-Russian occupation administration in the Zaporizhia region accused the Ukrainian forces of having bombed the town of Energodar, close to the power plant.
Mr. Guterres’ visit was marked by another topic that worries the world: Ukrainian grain exports.
Blocked after the Russian invasion of February 24, which raised the specter of a global food crisis, they resumed after the conclusion in July of an agreement between Moscow and kyiv, with the mediation of Mr. Erdogan.
During a joint press conference with MM. Zelensky and Erdogan, Mr. Guterres promised on Thursday that his organization would work to “intensify” Ukrainian grain exports before the onset of winter.
In particular, they are crucial for the food supply of many African countries, Ukraine being one of the main world producers and exporters of cereals.
As a result of the July agreement, 25 ships carrying “more than 600,000 tons of Ukrainian agricultural products” have transited since this week through the “grain corridor” from the ports of Odessa, Pivdenny and Chornomorsk, according to kyiv.
Mr. Guterres welcomed a “beginning of stabilization” in agricultural markets since the agreement.
But “there is still a long way to go before this translates into people’s daily lives, in their bakeries and in the markets”, he nuanced, pointing to “disrupted supply chains” and “unacceptable energy and transportation costs”.
After Odessa, Guterres plans to travel to Turkey to visit the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) which oversees the implementation of the July agreement.
Bombings and sabotage
In the east, Russian bombardments left at least five dead and ten injured in several localities in the Donetsk region, one of the two provinces of Donbass, announced its governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, on social networks.
Russian artillery has been advancing slowly in recent weeks in Donbass, a region which was already before the current conflict, since 2014, partly in the hands of pro-Russian separatists, and which Moscow, which has made it its strategic priority, intends to completely conquer .
Bombings also hit early Friday Kharkiv (northeast), Ukraine’s second largest city, and killed at least one person, according to local authorities. At least 12 other people had died in the same way in the region in the past two days, they said.