The Vienna-based United Nations agency said in a statement that its inspectors had “began and will soon finish verifying the activities of two signatories in Ukraine”.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said he would present later this week his “preliminary conclusions from recent verification activities at the two sites,” according to the statement.
The inspections came after the Ukrainian government requested in writing the International Atomic Energy Agency to send inspection teams to the two sites.
Russia accuses Ukraine of preparing to use dirty bombs against Russian forces, but Kyiv suspects that Russia may have taken the initiative to attribute the attack to Ukraine in an attempt to justify Moscow’s later resort to nuclear weapons, after it recently suffered losses in eastern and southern Ukraine.
And last week, the agency announced that it had inspected one of the sites “a month ago,” stressing that “no undeclared nuclear activity was found.”
The so-called “dirty bomb” consists of conventional explosives surrounded by radioactive materials intended to be dispersed in the air at the time of the explosion.
Putin called on the agency last Thursday to send a mission to Ukraine “as soon as possible.”
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