UN agency raises alarm over fresh N-plant shelling
MOSCOW: Powerful explosions shook Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday, calling for “urgent measures to help prevent a nuclear accident” in the Russian-occupied facility.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said two explosions one Saturday evening and another Sunday morning - near the plant ended a period of relative calm around the nuclear facility that has been the site of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces since Russia invaded on February 24.
In what appeared to be renewed shelling both close to and at the site, IAEA experts at the Zaporizhzhia facility reported hearing more than a dozen blasts within a short period on Sunday morning, the statement said, adding that the IAEA team could see some explosions from their windows.
Several buildings, systems and equipment at the power plant - none of them critical for the plant’s nuclear safety and security - were damaged in the shelling, the IAEA said, citing information from the plant’s management. There were no reports of casualties.
Still, Grossi said reports of shelling were “extremely disturbing”. He added: “Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately.” “As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!” Grossi said, and appealed to both sides in the conflict to urgently agree and implement a nuclear safety and security zone around the nuclear facility.
Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s power grid and other key infrastructure from the air, causing widespread blackouts for millions of Ukrainians amid frigid weather, with snow blanketing the capital, Kyiv, and other cities.
Negotiating with Russia will be capitulation: Kyiv
The West’s attempts to persuade Ukraine to negotiate with Moscow, after a series of major military victories by Kyiv, are “bizarre” and amount to asking for its capitulation, a key adviser to the Ukrainian presidency told AFP. “When you have the initiative on the battlefield, it’s slightly bizarre to receive proposals like: ‘you will not be able to do everything by military means anyway, you need to negotiate,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak.
Meanwhile, Russia has reached an agreement with Iran to begin manufacturing unmanned weaponised aircraft on Russian soil, The Washington Post reported, citing intelligence seen by US and other Western security agencies.