“We are finally moving after several months (…) of effort. The IAEA is going inside the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant,” said the director of the UN agency, Rafael Grossi, to journalists in kyiv, just before leaving.
The plant, the largest in Europe, has been occupied by the Russian army since the beginning of March, after the invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24. kyiv has accused Moscow of deploying hundreds of troops there and stockpiling ammunition there.
“I am fully aware of the importance of this moment but we are ready. The IAEA is ready. We will report back after our mission. We will spend a few days there”, added Mr. Grossi who led a team of 13 people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received on Tuesday the IAEA experts, who arrived in kyiv on Monday, saying on this occasion that the international community should obtain from Russia “an immediate demilitarization” of the plant.
This, he added, implies “the departure of all Russian soldiers with all their explosives, all their weapons” from this site in southern Ukraine and on which kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of having carried out strikes .
“Unfortunately Russia does not stop its provocations, precisely in the directions by which the mission must arrive at the central”, lamented Mr. Zelensky, adding that the situation was “extremely threatening”.
“The risk of a nuclear disaster due to Russia’s actions does not diminish even for an hour,” he said.
Oleksandre Staroukh, the regional governor, had spoken in this regard a few hours earlier of missile fire on the city of Zaporijjia.
The Zaporijjia power plant, one of the four nuclear power plants operating in Ukraine, has six reactors with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts each.
Last week, it was briefly disconnected from the power grid for the first time in its history, after power lines were damaged.
– “Ukrainian counter-offensive –
For its part, the Ukrainian army continues its counter-offensive in the south, where intense fighting has been reported.
“Fighting is currently taking place practically on the entire front line: in the south, in the Kharkiv region (northeast) and in the Donbass (east),” President Zelensky said on Tuesday evening.
In Bereznehuvate, a locality 70 km north of Kherson, a southern city taken by the Russians at the start of the war, AFP witnessed a constant passage of Ukrainian armored vehicles, while numerous artillery fire echoed in the surroundings.
Some soldiers were on their way to the front, like this small group waiting for their T74 tank, whose engine was overheating, to be repaired.
“We got them well,” boasted Victor, an infantryman in his sixties, without wanting to say more.
Ukraine’s presidency on Tuesday reported “powerful explosions” in the Kherson region as well as the destruction of “a number of Russian ammunition depots” and “all major bridges” that allow vehicles to cross the Dnieper , the river watering this part of Ukraine. And this in order to cut off supplies from Crimea.
Russia for its part assured on Monday that it had repelled Ukrainian “offensive attempts” in the Kherson region as well as in that of Mykolaiv, further west.
“Due to the failure of the Ukrainian offensive (…), the enemy suffered heavy losses”, or 1,200 men “in one day”, as well as dozens of military vehicles, the ministry proclaimed on Tuesday. Russian Defense.
This information was unverifiable from independent sources.
The Russian bombardments have also not ceased on the front line which extends from north to south.
In the center of Kharkiv (northeast), Ukraine’s second largest city, at least five people died in Russian strikes, local authorities said on Tuesday.
And others left two dead and 24 injured in Mykolaiv.
In this context, the Ministers of Defense of the Member States of the European Union agreed on Tuesday, during an informal meeting in Prague, to start the preparatory work for a training plan for Ukrainian soldiers by the EU.
In another war waged in parallel, that of gas, a further step was taken on Tuesday towards the drying up of flows from Russia to France with the announcement by Gazprom of the total suspension from Thursday of its deliveries to the Engie group, officially for an unpaid.
