The head of Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company said there were indications that Russian forces might be preparing to leave the Zaporizhia plant.
Such a move would mark a major shift on the battlefield in the Russian-controlled Zaporizhia region, where the front line has seen little change for months. Frequent bombing in its vicinity has long raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe.
“In recent weeks we are actually receiving information that indications have appeared that they may be preparing to leave (the station),” Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s Energoatom company, told national television.
“In principle, there are a very large number of reports in the Russian media that it is worth evacuating (the plant) and possibly transferring control (to the International Atomic Energy Agency)” of the United Nations, Reuters quoted the head of the nuclear power police.
“There is an impression that they are packing their bags and stealing whatever they can,” he continued.
Russia and Ukraine, which witnessed the worst nuclear accident in the world in Chernobyl in 1986, have been exchanging accusations for months of bombing the Zaporizhya plant complex, which no longer generates energy.
Asked if it was too early to talk about Russian forces leaving the station, Cotten told television: “It’s too early. We don’t expect it to happen now, but they are preparing (to leave).”
And the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency met a Russian delegation in Istanbul on November 23 to discuss the establishment of a protection zone around the plant, which is the largest in Europe, to prevent a nuclear disaster. Zaporizhia used to provide about 20 percent of Ukraine’s electricity.
The RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov a day after the meeting as saying the decision on the protection zone should be taken “very quickly”.
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