The head of Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency Energoatom on Monday called for the creation of a “demilitarized zone” at the site of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, which was bombed, accusing Kyiv and Moscow of each other.
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“What needs to be done is to remove the occupiers from the territory of the power plant and create a demilitarized zone,” said Petro Cotten, in a video posted on Energoatom’s Telegram page.
He continued, “There should be a peacekeeping mission that includes experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency and other security organizations,” believing that the presence of the Russian army at the site “constitutes the greatest danger to the future, an accident involving radiation or even a nuclear catastrophe.”
He also accused the IAEA of having had a “very soft reaction” since the Russian military seized the site in March.
According to him, the power plant in Zaporizhia, the largest in Ukraine and Europe, is occupied by “about 500 soldiers, 50 heavy vehicles, tanks and trucks.”
Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other since Friday of strikes near the reactors of this nuclear power plant located in southern Ukraine.
And the Russian Defense Ministry said, on Monday, that the last strike, on the night of Saturday, Sunday, damaged a high-voltage line that supplies electricity to two Ukrainian regions. The reactor was closed on Saturday after it was targeted by strikes.
According to Petro Kotin, two Ukrainian employees of the plant were injured in these strikes.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed on Monday that “any attack on nuclear power plants is suicidal.”
