The authorities of Zaporozhye offered UN Secretary General António Guterres to personally come to the region in order to ascertain the unwillingness of local residents to remain part of Ukraine. This was stated by Vladimir Rogov, a member of the main council of the regional administration, in an interview with “RIA News”.
“We will be happy for the visit of the UN Secretary General and are ready to show how our region strives for a peaceful life and how Zelensky’s militants are trying their best to prevent this. Guterres can personally verify the unwillingness of local residents to remain part of Ukraine anymore and in an effort to return to their historical homeland, to Russia, ”Rogov said.
According to him, the UN Secretary General during his visit to Ukraine may also visit the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which is systematically subjected to shelling by the Ukrainian army.
Rogov stressed that despite the UN calls to guarantee the right of peoples to freedom and self-determination, he is afraid that Mr. Guterres will pretend that he did not hear the inhabitants of the Zaporozhye region.
Earlier, on August 17, the UN Secretary General arrived in Lviv. On August 18, Guterres will take part in a trilateral meeting with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Lviv. The next day, Guterres will pay a visit to one of the three ports of Odessa involved in the grain deal.
On August 15, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held telephone conversations with Guterres. The parties discussed the conditions for the safe operation of the Zaporizhzhya NPP and exchanged views on the functioning of the “fact-finding mission” regarding the incident in the pre-trial detention center in Yelenovka, and also discussed the UN initiatives regarding the procedure for simplifying the export of Russian food and fertilizers.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine regularly shell the ZNPP territory. On August 15, they launched about 25 heavy artillery strikes on Energodar and the nuclear power plant area, fired from American M777 howitzers.
On August 14, Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said that the Security Department of the UN Secretariat was unable to give clear explanations why it had disrupted the visit of IAEA inspectors to ZNPP at the last moment. Moscow insists on the visit of inspectors and fixing Ukrainian strikes.
On February 24, Russia launched a special operation to protect the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR). It was preceded by an aggravation of the situation in the region, an appeal by the leadership of the Donbass republics to the Russian Federation with a request for help, and the subsequent recognition by Russia of the independence of the DPR and LPR.
For more up-to-date videos and details about the situation in Donbass, watch the Izvestia TV channel.
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