The IAEA refused to create a demilitarized zone around the Zaporozhye NPP

The creation of a demilitarized zone around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is no longer being considered, we are talking about the cessation of hostilities around the nuclear power plant. This was stated on Wednesday by Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi at a seminar at the American non-governmental Council on Foreign Relations.

The head of the IAEA was asked if his idea of ​​creating a demilitarized zone around the ZNPP received sufficient international support.

“We are not talking about the demilitarized zone. We are well aware of what additional difficulties this will bring, especially in the zone of active hostilities. It will be extremely difficult to carry out the verification process – more than one mile from the demilitarized zone, the territory will be extremely militarized. That’s why we [больше] we don’t consider it” he replied.

Grossi added that now it is about the need to “make sure that the station is not attacked or that the station is not used for attack.”

He said that negotiations on various models of the demilitarized zone had been going on for seven to eight months.

“We discussed with both parties different options, shapes and sizes. And I came to the conclusion that the territorial issue will be something that, for various reasons, for Ukraine can also be seen as the legitimization of the Russian presence, and so on and so forth,” the IAEA director general explained.

Former Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that an agreement on the creation of a security zone at the ZNPP was close, but the Ukrainian side blocked it. At the beginning of September 2022, the IAEA mission led by Grossi visited the Zaporozhye NPP. After that, several IAEA employees remained at the station as observers. It later published a report calling for the creation of a safety zone around the ZNPP to prevent accidents due to hostilities.