Ukraine’s atomic energy authority Energoatom accused Russia on Tuesday of kidnapping two employees at the Zaporizhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian control since March 4.
Russian forces “kidnapped” the plant’s chief information officer, Oleg Kostioukov, and deputy general manager Oleg Ocheka, and “took them to an unknown destination,” Energoatom said in a statement posted on social media.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, assured that Russia and Ukraine are “manifestly” willing to accept the creation of a protection zone around the nuclear power plant.
The area could ensure that Europe’s largest nuclear power station is no longer “in such a precarious situation,” Grossi said in an interview with the Argentine newspaper ‘La Nación’.
On Monday, Zaporizhia was once again without electricity from the external grid, relying on diesel generators to cool the reactors, with Ukraine and Russia blaming each other for responsibility for the situation.
Energoatom said the plant was cut off from the power grid overnight due to the Russian bombing of a substation.
With the external power cut, “the reserve transformer for needs” of the plant was turned off and the diesel generators were started, according to Energoatom.
Russia, for its part, accused Ukrainian forces of being responsible for the situation at the plant, the largest of its kind in Europe.
The president of the movement “We are together with Russia”, Vladimir Rogov, told the official Russian agency TASS that the Ukrainian shelling prevents the plant from restarting.
According to Rogov, it is necessary that “the bombings of the militants of the [Presidente ucraniano, Volodymyr] Zelensky please stop and restore all power lines.”
Since then, it has been one of the main focuses of the war in Ukraine, faced with the danger of a nuclear disaster like that of the Ukrainian Chernobyl power plant in 1986, the most serious in the world, when the country was part of the former Union Soviet.
Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of launching attacks on the surrounding area, endangering the security of the plant and the region.
In August, a special IAEA mission began to assess the state of the facilities and their workers, maintaining a team at the plant.
Last week, the director of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, met with Ukrainian and Russian authorities to try to reach an agreement that would allow the demilitarization of the plant.
“The situation at the plant is untenable and we need immediate action to protect it,” he said on Twitter on Friday, returning from kyiv.
Source: TSF
