UN atomic watchdog chief visits Ukraine’s threatened nuclear plant

The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog visited Europe’s largest atomic power plant in southern Ukraine on Thursday.

The visit was announced by Ukraine’s national nuclear energy company, Energoatom, in a Telegram post.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, met Tuesday in Kyiv with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss concerns about the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The IAEA has repeatedly expressed alarm about the facility, which is one of the 10 biggest in the world, amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe. The agency has officials stationed at the plant, which is still run by its Ukrainian staff.

Last week, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine’s partially Russian-occupied Kherson region added a new concern. The dam, further down the Dnieper River, helped keep water in a reservoir that cools the plant’s reactors.

The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

Ukraine recently said it hoped to place the last functioning reactor in cold shutdown. The process inserts control rods into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction and the generation of heat and pressure.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that areas of the 1,000-km front line in Ukraine are witnessing “fierce fighting” after Kyiv’s long-anticipated launch of its counteroffensive using Western-supplied weapons.

Ukraine has so far been “testing” Russian defences, looking for weaknesses, according to Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Mr Zelensky.

“We haven’t yet started our counter-offensive as such,” he claimed in televised remarks.

He noted that Ukrainian troops were launching simultaneous attacks in many directions, seeking to cause panic among the Russian troops.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defence Ministry said its military used long-range air-launched cruise missiles to strike Ukrainian drone-making facilities. It claimed all the targeted facilities were hit but did not mention where they were or any other details.

It was not possible to verify battlefield claims by either side.

Russian forces have kept up their aerial attacks on Ukraine. They launched four cruise missiles and 20 Iranian Sahed exploding drones overnight, the Ukrainian air force said.

Ukrainian air defences downed all the drones and one cruise missile, it said.

Russian missiles hit industrial facilities in the latest strike on the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih, Mr Zelensky’s home town, wounding one person, local officials said.

An air strike also hit downtown Kherson city in the early hours of Thursday, punching a hole an office building.

Russia also attacked Kharkiv and Odesa with drones overnight, but regional authorities said they were all shot down.