Plant shelling sparks fresh IAEA plea
LONDON/LVIV, Ukraine — The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog called for urgent measures to help prevent a nuclear accident in Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, said more than a dozen blasts shook the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant late on Saturday and on Sunday. IAEA head Rafael Grossi said the attacks were extremely disturbing and completely unacceptable.
Speaking to French broadcaster BFMTV later on Sunday, Grossi said it was clear that the strikes on the plant were no accident. “It is absolutely deliberate, targeted,” he said.
“Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately. As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!” Grossi said in a statement.
Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the shelling of the facility.
Kyiv “does not stop its provocations aiming at creating the threat of a man-made catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant”, the Russian army said in a statement on Sunday.
Despite the shelling, radiation levels “remain normal”, the army added.
Ukrainian nuclear energy agency Energoatom said shortly after that Russia was behind the explosions.
Citing information provided by plant management, an IAEA team on the ground said there had been damage to some buildings, systems and equipment, but none of them critical for nuclear safety and security.
The team had planned to conduct an assessment on Monday, Grossi said.
The attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant came as battles raged in the east, where Russian forces pounded Ukrainian positions along the front line, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces battered Ukrainian frontline positions with artillery fire, with the heaviest attacks in the Donetsk region, Zelensky said in a video address.
Russia withdrew its forces from the southern city of Kherson this month and moved some of them to reinforce positions in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, an industrial area known as the Donbas.
In an early Monday update, Ukraine’s military confirmed heavy fighting over the previous 24 hours, saying its forces had repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk while Russian forces were shelling Lugansk in the east and Kharkiv in the northeast.
In the south, Zelensky said troops were “consistently and very calculatedly destroying the potential of the occupiers”, but gave no details. Kherson city remains without electricity, running water or heating.