UN watchdog holds ‘useful and frank’ Ukraine nuclear plant protection zone talks with Russia

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog met officials from Russia’s military and state atomic energy company in Moscow on Thursday as he pursues a long-running drive to set up a protection zone around a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

Russian company Rosatom described the talks on measures needed to safeguard Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the surrounding area as “substantive, useful and frank”.

International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi indicated that more negotiations are needed after “another round of necessary discussions”.

“It’s key that the zone focuses solely on preventing a nuclear accident,” he tweeted. “I am continuing my efforts towards this goal with a sense of utmost urgency.”

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The meeting in Moscow came a day after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy made a defiant wartime visit to the US capital, his first known trip outside his country in the nearly 10 months since Russia invaded. The visit to Washington was aimed at reinvigorating support for Ukraine in the US and around the world at a time when Russia appears to have lost battlefield momentum.

There is concern that Ukraine’s allies are growing weary of providing the military and economic assistance that have enabled Ukraine to keep fighting.

The Russian military reported on Thursday that defence minister Sergei Shoigu paid a visit to Russian troops on the front line of what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. The exact location of the visit was not disclosed.

A video released by the Russian defence ministry showed Mr Shoigu inspecting temporary troop quarters in dugouts and talking to military commanders.

Before his trip to Washington, Mr Zelenskiy met Ukrainian troops in the eastern city of Bakhmut, the recent focus of some of the war’s most intense combat.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has never been seen travelling to frontline areas. Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that he visited his Ukraine command headquarters last week, but its location was not disclosed, and it was not even clear if it was in Ukraine.

The IAEA’s Mr Grossi has been urging Russia and Ukraine for more than three months to agree on a safety zone around Europe’s largest nuclear power station.

Zaporizhizia province and areas across the Dnieper River from the nuclear power plant have been under regular shelling since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for a demilitarised zone around the plant, which was seized by Russian forces early in the war.

Although all six of the plant’s reactors have been shut down, the reactor core and used nuclear fuel must still be cooled for lengthy periods to prevent them overheating and triggering dangerous meltdowns like the ones that occurred in 2011 when a tsunami hit the Fukushima plant in Japan. Ukraine saw the world’s worst nuclear accident, at Chernobyl in 1986.

Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for the repeated shelling, which has led on multiple occasions to the Zaporizhizia plant losing the electricity needed to operate the cooling system.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian officials also accused Russian troops of installing multiple rocket launchers at the site.

Mr Grossi said in November that the main issues under discussion involve military equipment and the radius of the safety zone.

He said the IAEA’s proposal is very simple: “Don’t shoot at the plant, don’t shoot from the plant.”

Meanwhile on Thursday, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said that recent military manoeuvres were not aimed at Ukraine and dismissed “conspiracy theories” about deployments of Belarusian armed forces at the border.

Speaking at a conference of military leaders marking the end of snap military inspections held this month, Lukashenko also said that he could not rule out “aggression” against Belarus on the part of unspecified “neighbours”.

“If you want peace, prepare for war,” Lukashenko added, saying that military moves were limited to Belarusian territory and did not threaten anyone else.

Belarus has in recent weeks announced a flurry of military activity, including readiness checks and a fresh deployment of Russian troops to the country. The manoeuvres prompted suggestions from Ukrainian officials that Russia may be planning a fresh attack on Ukraine via Belarusian territory, as it did unsuccessfully in the early days of its war in Ukraine.

Lukashenko on Monday hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Minsk, a rare foreign visit for the Kremlin chief. The visit prompted fears that Putin was seeking to cajole Belarus into joining the military campaign in Ukraine, something Lukashenko has so far declined to do.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports of such plans were “groundless” and “stupid”.

[ Analysis: US Patriots will boost Ukraine’s defence but won’t be a game-changer ]

Meanwhile on Thursday, Russia said that US supplies of Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, announced during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington, would not contribute to settling the conflict or prevent Russia from achieving its goals.

In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the Patriot shipment: “This is not conducive to a speedy settlement, quite the contrary. And this cannot prevent the Russian Federation from achieving its goals during the special military operation”, using Russia’s term for the war.

Peskov said that there had been no calls for peace or signs of willingness to “listen to Russia’s concerns” during Zelenskiy’s visit on Wednesday, proving that the United States was fighting a proxy war with Russia “to the last Ukrainian”. – AP/Reuters