MELITOPOL, March 8. /TASS/. Foreign media workers and public figures, including those from European countries, have had a chance to see for themselves the consequences of the Ukrainian military’s bombardments of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the military-civilian administration of the Zaporozhye Region told the media on Wednesday.
The delegation included representatives from Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.
"In Energodar, they inspected the places where Ukrainian shells crashed during the bombardments of urban infrastructure and the Zaporozhye NPP - on the buildings of power units and other facilities and equipment of the nuclear power plant and rooms for personnel," the military-civilian administration said.
The ZNPP had come under the Ukrainian army’s fire dozens of times. The journalists had an opportunity to see for themselves that there was no military equipment on the power plant’s territory. "Nuclear power plant personnel asked the visiting media to urge the Ukrainian side to observe the inviolability of the nuclear power plant," the military-civilian administration said.
In Vasilyevka, the foreign delegation examined the results of shellings of a local hospital, as well as residential buildings. The chief physician of Vasilyevka’s hospital demonstrated a damaged operating room, in particular, its shrapnel-riddled walls. "According to the doctors, the shelling occurred at the moment when there was a minor on the operating table. In another incident, one of the hospital buildings was completely destroyed. In such conditions, doctors, nurses and technical staff continue to do their job round the clock," the military-civilian administration said in statement.
Russia has repeatedly drawn the attention of the international community to the shellings of the Zaporozhye NPP from Ukraine. IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said in early December that an agreement on establishing a security zone around the ZNPP could be reached soon. Earlier, the head of the Rosatom state corporation, Alexey Likhachev, said that the security model that was being discussed with Grossi excluded any shelling of the facility. Meanwhile, Ukraine keeps pressing for what it describes as demilitarization of the ZNPP, which in reality would mean the withdrawal of Russian guards.