🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
The situation around southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is "increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous," the United Nations' nuclear watchdog has said, as residents are evacuated from the contested area around the nuclear facility.
"I'm extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant," Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a statement on Saturday.
"We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment," Grossi continued. "This major nuclear facility must be protected."
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is Europe's largest nuclear power station and was seized by Russian forces early on in Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Although under Russian control, Ukrainian staff have continued to work at the facility near the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar. Operating staff "remain at the site," the IAEA said on Saturday, calling the conditions for employees and their families in the area "increasingly tense, stressful and challenging."
Zaporizhzhia was one of four regions declared as annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2022, although this is not internationally recognized and Russia does not control the entirety of the Zaporizhzhia region.
The security of the plant has long had alarm bells ringing, and in the initial days of the invasion Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that should there be an explosion at the facility, "it will be the end to all of us: the end of Europe, the evacuation of Europe."
Shelling was continuing at the site "on a regular basis," the nuclear watchdog added over the weekend. Kyiv and Moscow have blamed one another for shelling around the site.
In an update posted to social media on Sunday the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said Russian authorities in the Zaporizhzhia region were "evacuating civilians" with Russian passports to the port city of Berdyansk and the nearby coastal city of Prymorsk. Newsweek could not independently verify these evacuation reports.
Ivan Fedorov, the exiled Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, which Russia said earlier this year it would recognize as the temporary regional capital of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Telegram on Sunday that in evacuation convoys, just one third of those evacuated were civilians.
The IAEA said its experts had "received information that the announced evacuation of residents from the nearby town of Enerhodar – where most plant staff live – has started," adding the organizing was "closely monitoring the situation for any potential impact on nuclear safety and security."
Russian state media also reported that Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of Russian authorities in Zaporizhzia, announced the "temporary" evacuation of civilians from 18 settlements near the front lines in the oblast.
Earlier in May, experts from the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank warned that the plant could be a target for Russian "sabotage."
Moscow's forces could "seek to deliberately engineer a radiological accident" at the plant and make emergency systems useless, Darya Dolzikova, a RUSI research fellow told Newsweek.
The Kremlin's fighters could also damage the critical support infrastructure or set charges around the site, only to blame the consequences on Ukraine, Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the think tank, added to Newsweek.
Newsweek has contacted Russia's defense ministry for comment via email.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more