The obvious determination of a discussion on whether inspectors travel to the plant via Ukraine or Russia came as a senior US defense official said Ukraine’s parties had brought the Russian charge to a stop.
“You are seeing a complete and total lack of progress by the Russians on the battlefield,” the official said, speaking to reporters on grounds of anonymity.
According to French President Emmanuel Macron’s office, Putin had “reconsidered the demand” that the International Atomic Energy Agency travels through Russia to the site after the Russian leader himself alerted that fighting there could bring about a “catastrophe”. It determined that Putin had dropped his demand that the IAEA delegation travels to the site through Russia, saying it could come via Ukraine.
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Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres prompted Moscow’s forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia plant in south Ukraine not to detach the facility from the grid and possibly cut supplies to millions of Ukrainians.
A flare-up in fighting around the Russian-controlled nuclear power station — with both sides accusing each other of causing the attacks — has introduced the specter of a disaster worse than in Chornobyl.
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The Kremlin said in a statement earlier that Putin and Macron decided that officials from the UN’s nuclear watchdog should carry out reviews “as soon as possible” to “assess the real situation on the ground”.
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Putin also “stressed that the systematic shelling by the Ukrainian military of the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant creates the danger of a large-scale catastrophe”, the Kremlin added.
The warning came just a day after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres, meeting in the east Ukrainian city of Lviv, sounded the alarm over the intensified fighting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the United Nations to secure the site.
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The Turkish leader said: “We are worried. We do not want another Chernobyl,” referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster, while Guterres cautioned that any damage to the plant would be akin to “suicide”.
During his visit to the southern port of Odessa on Friday, the UN secretary-general said: “Obviously, the electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity. This principle must be fully respected”. “Naturally, its energy must be used by the Ukrainian people,” he told AFP in separate comments.
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His comments came after Ukrainian energy operator Energoatom alleged that Russian troops were planning to “shut off the reactors” at Zaporizhzhia, which is capable of supplying four million homes. On Thursday, Moscow said Kyiv was preparing a “provocation” at the site that would see Russia “accused of creating a man-made disaster at the plant”.
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