Moscow and Kyiv have traded accusations of targeting the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine, which has been under Russian control since March following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
The site has suffered weeks of sporadic shelling that has caused fires and damaged buildings in the sprawling facility.
Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, has said that while there was no immediate threat to nuclear safety that could “change at any minute”.
“These military actions near such a large nuclear facility could lead to very serious consequences,” he told the UN Security Council at an emergency meeting on Thursday night.
However, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to international missions in Vienna, told the Izvestia newspaper in an interview published on Friday that a visit by
Grossi could not take place before “the end of August or early September”.
Russia has already rejected demands to demilitarise the facility.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly warned that Russia’s control of the plant creates a radiation danger for Europe. “Only the complete withdrawal of Russians from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia . . . and the restoration of Ukraine’s full control over the situation around the plant will guarantee the restoration of nuclear safety for all of Europe,” he said in his most recent nightly address on Thursday.
But Russia has refused demands to return control of the plant to Ukraine.
“The only way to ensure security at the plant is to have 100 percent control over it. Ukraine’s government are in no state to do that” while fighting the war,
Konstantin Kosachev, a senior Russian lawmaker in the upper house of parliament, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news wire.
Kosachev warned that allowing “any people from outside without the requisite competencies will carry the risk of further provocations”.
A Kyiv official said Ukraine is considering evacuating its citizens around the power plant.