The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyhas demanded the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to release “control” of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant from Russian forces in view of the high risk of a nuclear disaster caused by Moscow.
The top Ukrainian leader has considered that the only possible response to the “russian nuclear blackmail” is that the IAEA achieves that the plant is “under permanent control of Ukraine”. This message has come after the reconnection to the electrical network overview of the plant’s two reactors, which were shut down Thursday for the first time since their inauguration in 1985.
“That is why it is so important that Russian troops withdraw from the plant and nearby areas so that the bombing threat of the plant itself or of the power lines connected to it”, the president assured. The risk of a catastrophe occurring is so high that the authorities in the area have distributed iodine tablets to residents living near the plant in case of radiation exposure.
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Zelenski has summoned the IAEA to appear “as soon as possible” at the plant, since “the situation continues to be” very risky and dangerous. “Any disconnection of the plant from the electrical network, any action by Russia that could trigger the shutdown of reactorswill once again put the plant one step away from disaster”, he asserted in his daily speech.
The director of the IAEA, Raphael Mariano Grossi, has shown confidence in this situation in the UN agency, whose presence in Zaporizhia is “urgently necessary.” Likewise, the leader has also announced that he will visit the plant “very soon”. However, Grossi has warned of the “potential vulnerability” of a plant like this in a conflict zone.
This call has coincided with preparations for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send a group of experts to Zaporizhia, something that could happen “in the next few days”, according to its director.
concern persists
Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of bomb the surroundings of the nuclear plant. On the one hand, kyiv has signaled to Moscow to bomb the plant in the last few hours. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed that Ukrainian troops “shelled the territory of the station three times” in the last day.
Energoatom -the Ukrainian state nuclear company- has also denounced that Russia is putting pressure on the plant’s operators not to reveal “the crimes of the occupants in the plant and its use as a military base.
Energoatom has considered that it is time to “take urgent measures” for Russia to cede control of Europe’s largest atomic plant to Ukraine “for the sake of the safety of the whole world“.
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In addition, this entity has accused the Russian army in a statement on Telegram of attack “repeatedly” the central area. “Due to the presence of Russian troops with their weapons, equipment and explosives on the premises there are serious risks to keeping the plant safe,” he said.
“The infrastructure has been damaged, there are risks of Hydrogen spills and spraying of radioactive substancesand the risk of fire is high,” Energoatom added in his message.
For its part, Russia has blocked the agreement on the Non-Proliferation Treaty precisely because of this plant, since the West demands the complete demilitarization of the area. But Moscow, which has created a land corridor between Donbas and the annexed Crimean peninsula through the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, has refused to relinquish control of the plant.
Russia keeps the pulse
The Russian Ministry of Defense has denounced this Saturday three Ukrainian artillery attacks against the vicinity of the plant, where they would have impacted up to 17 shells. Four of those rockets would have hit the roof of the building that stores the nuclear fuel of the US company Westinghouse, according to General Igor Konashénkov.
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These missiles would have been launched from the Dnipropetrovsk region. In response, the Russian artillery would have destroyed an M777 gun of the Ukrainian Army. Likewise, Konashénkov has underlined that “the radioactive situation at the Zaporizhia Power Plant is within the norm” and has flatly denied that the facilities have “heavy weaponry”.
Meanwhile, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has assured the French television channel LCI that “the special military operation is being carried out so that the Third World war“.
Medvedev explained that if Ukraine had entered the NATO and there had been a military operation against Russian territory, that would have caused “the start of the Third World War”. “For now the situation is being controlled. The apocalypse has not yet arrived and I hope it does not,” he added.
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