MELITOPOL, February 13. /TASS/. Experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who returned to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) after the Kiev regime blocked the IAEA rotation will continue to perform their work, the plant's spokeswoman, Yevgenia Yashina, told TASS.

"All the experts have returned to the Zaporozhye NPP after the hostile actions of Ukrainian troops who hindered the IAEA rotation. Everything is fine with them. The vehicles in which the IAEA experts were during the rotation are intact. The agency's experts continue to observe and assess the operational and physical safety of the Zaporozhye NPP until the rotation resumes," Yashina said.

On February 12, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that a routine rotation of the IAEA Secretariat’s experts, which was previously postponed from February 5 to February 12 because of Ukraine, had once again been prevented. According to the diplomat, this occurred due to the deliberate actions of the Ukrainians as they refused to allow the passage of the agency experts "who had been waiting for the opportunity to replace their colleagues since the beginning of February."

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi stated after a meeting with Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation chief Alexey Likhachev on February 7 that expert rotations at the Zaporozhye NPP would resume in the coming days. Earlier, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry claimed that a routine rotation of the international organization’s observers had been postponed allegedly due to Russia’s failure to provide security guarantees.

Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov reiterated that Ukraine was distorting facts when it spoke about a lack of security guarantees from Russia for the IAEA expert rotation at the Zaporozhye NPP. He clarified that Kiev had tried to impose new requirements that went beyond established practices.