The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency met on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to get a deal on creating a safety protection zone around the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
“Now more than ever … a protection zone must be established,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said in a statement. “We can’t afford to lose any more time. The stakes are high. We must do everything in our power to help ensure that a nuclear accident does not happen during this tragic conflict, as it could cause even more hardship and suffering in Ukraine and beyond.”
Putin told Grossi that Moscow is “happy to discuss all the issues that are of mutual interest to us,” according to Russia’s TASS news agency, adding that the situation around the plant was a “concern” for the Kremlin.
There was no report that a deal had been reached.
The meeting comes after Putin last week ordered that the daily operation of the nuclear power plant — the largest in Europe — be transferred to a subsidiary of the Russian nuclear company Rosatom following Russia’s bogus annexation of the broader Zaporizhzhia region. The facility has been occupied by Russian soldiers since March but it continues to be run by Ukrainian staff.
The Ukrainian government rejects the validity of Putin’s decree and named Petro Kotin, the head of the country’s nuclear operator Energoatom, as the interim director of the Zaporizhzhia plant.
During a visit last week to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Grossi said: “The position of the IAEA is that this facility is a Ukrainian facility.”
The IAEA has four experts present at the site; they reported that external power to the plant has been restored after being destroyed by shelling. All six reactors at the plant were put in cold shutdown last month and are not producing electricity.
The situation around the plant “has become increasingly dangerous, precarious and challenging, with frequent military attacks that can also threaten nuclear safety and security,” Grossi added, arguing that ongoing shelling is “tremendously irresponsible.”
When in Kyiv last week, Grossi discussed the safety protection zone with Zelenskyy and also said he had indications that mines have been laid around the perimeter of the plant, but not inside it.
Earlier on Tuesday, Energoatom reported that Valeriy Martyniuk, the deputy director general for human resources of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, had been kidnapped by Russian soldiers on Monday and was “apparently being tortured.”
