A team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog was on its way on Monday to Ukraine‘s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the agency’s chief said, as Russia and Ukraine traded accusations of shelling in its vicinity, fueling fears of a radiation disaster, according to Reuters.
Captured by Russian troops in March but run by Ukrainian staff, Zaporizhzhia has been a hotspot in a conflict that has settled into a war of attrition fought mainly in Ukraine’s east and south six months after Russia launched its invasion.
“We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,” Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a post on Twitter.
An IAEA team he was leading was on its way to the south Ukraine plant and would arrive later this week, Grossi said.
The United Nations and Ukraine have called for a withdrawal of military equipment and personnel from the nuclear power plant to ensure it is not a target.
The two sides have for days exchanged accusations of courting disaster with their attacks.
With fears mounting of a nuclear accident in a country still haunted by the Chernobyl disaster, Zaporizhzhia authorities are handing out iodine tablets and teaching residents how to use them in case of a radiation leak.
Russian forces fired at Enerhodar, the city where the plant is located, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said late on Sunday on his Telegram channel alongside a video of fire fighters dousing burning cars.
Ukraine’s military earlier reported shelling of nine more towns on the opposite side of the Dnipro river.
Russia’s defence ministry reported more Ukrainian shelling at the plant over the weekend.
Nine shells fired by the Ukrainian artillery landed in the plant’s grounds, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
“At present, full-time technical personnel are monitoring the technical condition of the nuclear plant and ensuring its operation. The radiation situation in the area of the nuclear power plant remains normal,” he said in a statement.
The Russian state news agency cited authorities as saying they had downed a Ukrainian drone which planned to attack the nuclear-waste storage facility at the plant. Two of the plant’s reactors were cut off from the electrical grid last week due to shelling.
The U.S. State Department said on Sunday that Russia did not want to acknowledge the grave radiological risk at plant and had blocked a draft agreement on nuclear non-proliferation because it mentioned such risk.