IAEA Director General again visits Ukraine and Russia to agree on safety zone around Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), intends to visit Ukraine and Russia again to negotiate a nuclear safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Source: Rafael Grossi in an interview with Rai, Italian TV channel, reports European Pravda Details: Grossi states that in Ukraine he will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Denys Shmyhal, the Prime Minister, and Dmytro Kuleba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

"After that, there is hope to get to Moscow. The plant is Ukrainian but under Russian control, and it is a reality. And I have to work with both sides," he said.

"Our duty is to secure the plant. The establishment of a permanent group [of IAEA observers] is the first concrete and tangible result of our efforts, but we cannot stop; the main thing is to protect the plant's safety," the IAEA Director General emphasised. He has said that the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia regarding the safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia NPP are ongoing. "This agreement is not impossible, because a nuclear accident is not in the interests of anyone, not even the Russians," Grossi states.

Background: The situation at the Zaporizhzhia NPP has been in the spotlight since early August, when the Russian military began shelling the plant.

Russia has rejected calls to demilitarise the nuclear plant under the pretext of "protecting it" from provocations and blames Ukraine for the shelling. After a short-lived mission at the Zaporizhzhia NPP, IAEA experts presented a report confirming that Russia had deployed "military personnel, vehicles and equipment in various locations at the plant". Since then, Rafael Grossi, the IAEA's Director General, has been negotiating with Kyiv and Moscow to establish a nuclear safety zone around the plant.

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