The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send missions to “secure” five nuclear power plants in Ukraine, including that of Zaporizhya, occupied by the Russian army, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said on Tuesday. .
“These missions are intended to secure these power plants and to record all the impacts coming from outside, in particular the strikes by the Russian aggressor”, wrote the Ukrainian official on Telegram after a meeting in Paris with the boss of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi.
He did not specify a timetable or the size of these missions, while the IAEA already has experts in Zaporijjia, the most sensitive site due to its proximity to the front and the Russian occupation.
According to Mr. Chmygal, the IAEA experts will therefore be deployed in Zaporijjia, Rivne, Khmelnytsky, Pivdennooukraïnsk and Chernobyl, the famous power station damaged in 1986 and which the Russians briefly occupied at the start of their invasion of Ukraine in February.
“This will greatly increase the technical and technological security” of these sites, he said.
Mr. Chmygal further indicated that Ukraine’s priority was the “demilitarization” of the Zaporizhia power plant, the largest in Europe.
Russians and Ukrainians have been accusing each other for months of pounding this site, at the risk of causing a catastrophe.
Moscow appropriated the plant and demanded the annexation of the entire region where it is located at the end of September.
For his part, Mr. Grossi, before his meeting with Mr. Chmygal on the sidelines of a conference of donors for Ukraine in Paris, had indicated that he was looking for an “agreement which will obviously have to involve the Russian side in order to protect the Zaporizhia power station.
“She is still in a very precarious situation,” he warned.
Russia has been carrying out massive strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since October, plunging millions of Ukrainians into darkness as winter sets in.
The bombings disconnected atomic power stations from the network at times, aggravating the power cuts that affect the whole country.