ROME, October 19. /TASS/: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has noted a decrease in the number of attacks in the vicinity of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
He noted that the IAEA is fulfilling a containing role, acknowledging, however, that it had failed to achieve the more ambitious goal of completely demilitarizing the area around the ZNPP.
"At the UN Security Council, I set forth five principles, including non-aggression against the nuclear power plant, its 'non-militarization' and continued supplies. And to this day, these principles have been observed," Grossi noted in an interview with Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper.
"I had a more ambitious idea to establish a zone free of any military activity, but as the conflict developed, neither side would have accepted it. Yet we do see the number of attacks going down," he added.
Located in Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear facility, with roughly 6GW of capacity, is the largest of its kind in Europe. Russia took control of the plant on February 28, 2022, in the first days of its special military operation in Ukraine. Since then, units of the Ukrainian army have periodically conducted shelling both of residential districts in nearby Energodar and the premises of the nuclear plant itself, by means of drones, heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). In most cases, air defense systems repel the attacks, although several times shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of a nuclear waste storage depot. In order to protect the ZNPP against shelling attacks, engineering structures, forming a safety net of sorts, have been built on its premises.
