Zaporizhia, Ukraine (AFP) - Fighting erupted Friday near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in a Russian-controlled region of eastern Ukraine, with inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog raising concerns about the facility’s “physical integrity” but were not met. Blame it on either of the warring parties. side.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said he expects to release a report “early next week, once we have the full picture of the situation by the end of the weekend, more or less”.
He told reporters in Vienna after returning from the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant that he would brief the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen what you asked to see - everything you asked to see,” Grossi said, adding that his biggest concerns were the “physical safety” of the plant, the facility’s power supply, and the condition of the staff.
“Military activity and operations are increasing in that part of the country, and that worries me a lot,” he said. “It is clear that the statistical possibility of further physical damage exists.”
He noted that the bombing began in August and was “obviously a recent trend,” but he did not blame the damage so far.
The head of Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Ole Kurikov, said Ukrainian officials “desire to take more decisive actions and statements” from IAEA inspectors. “But let’s wait until the job is done,” he added.
Russia-appointed local authorities said Friday that plant workers had restarted a major reactor just hours after the bombing that forced it the day before to shut down. The Ukrainian nuclear power company Energoatom confirmed on its Telegram channel that the reactivated reactor has again been connected to the power grid.
The facility now has two operating reactors, out of a total of six, Alexander Volga, the mayor of Kremlin-backed Inerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhya plant is located, told Interfax news agency.
The head of Ukraine’s powerful National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said that Ukrainian authorities are not fully aware of the situation inside the plant at the moment - despite the presence of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team on Thursday.
In an interview with The Associated Press,Danilov - a key official in the Ukrainian war effort - said: “I want to emphasize that this is a challenge for the whole world, how to make this nuclear facility not dangerous.”
Russia and Ukraine traded blame for the bombing that led to the reactor’s temporary shutdown on Thursday through its emergency protection system. Energoatom said the attack destroyed a backup power supply line used for internal needs, and one of the plant’s non-operating reactors was converted to diesel generators.
The British Ministry of Defense said earlier on Friday that bombing continued in the area near the factory, and the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russian bombing had destroyed homes, gas pipelines and other infrastructure on the other bank of the Dnieper River - part of the fighting in several regions in the east of the country. . And southern Ukraine overnight.
Russia-backed officials in Enerhodar claimed that Russian forces shot down an armed Ukrainian drone near the factory on Friday.
“It seems that the Ukrainian militants continue to try to attack the station despite the fact that there are employees of the International Atomic Energy Agency there,” the press service of the municipal administration said in a statement.
Ukraine’s military, in its regular update on Friday evening, said it had carried out a “precision strike” in Enerhodar, but did not directly acknowledge or respond to the allegations by Kremlin-backed officials. It added that the attack destroyed three artillery systems, an ammunition depot and a company of personnel.
Russia and Ukraine accused each other that the other side was trying to obstruct the work of IAEA experts, or to control the message.
Zelensky, in his Thursday evening address, delivered harsh words to the IAEA delegation. While praising her arrival at the factory, he said independent journalists were prevented from covering the visit, allowing the Russians to present a “useless” one-sided tour.
In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was looking “positively” at the mission’s arrival, “despite all the problems and difficulties caused by the provocative actions of the Ukrainian side.”
The 14-member delegation arrived in a convoy of SUVs and pickup trucks after months of negotiations to enable the experts to pass through the front lines. They countered the gunfire and artillery explosions along the way.
Grossi said Friday that six of the agency’s experts remain at the plant, and there will be a “permanent presence on site…with two of our experts who will continue to operate.” He was not specific about exactly how long the two experts would stay.
He said: “The difference between being present and not being present is like day and night.”
The factory has been occupied by Russian forces but has been run by Ukrainian engineers since the early days of the six-month war.
Grossi said there was a “professional style of work” at the site. “It was great that the Ukrainian experts continued to work in these conditions,” he said.
“It’s not an easy situation. It’s a tense situation, it’s not an ideal situation, it’s a situation that everyone deals with.”
Ukraine says Russia is using the plant as a shield to launch attacks. On Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed the Ukrainian allegations and said Russia had no heavy weapons either at the site or in the surrounding areas.
Shoigu said Ukrainian forces fired 120 artillery shells and used 16 suicide drones to strike the station, “which raises a real threat of a nuclear catastrophe in Europe.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Zelensky’s office said Friday that four people were killed and 10 wounded over the last day in the eastern Donetsk region, a major center of the Russian invasion.
___ Joanna Kozlowska in London and Geir Molson in Berlin contributed to this report.