MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. The West and the Kiev regime are sparring no effort not to let IAEA mission reach the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.
"Just look: we are sparing not effort to organize a visit by IAEA representatives to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. And they [IAEA] want it too, and the IAEA, as a structure, has been ready for that for quite a long time, but this so-called Western community, along with the Kiev regime, are doing their utmost not to let it happen," she said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher (Sunday Evening) with Vladimir Solovyov program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.
"Let us call things by their proper names. It is what can be called nuclear terrorism, when combat operations and targeted shelling are conducted against an operating nuclear power plant. Is the Kiev regime indulging in all types of provocations, so to say, on its own? Of course, not," she said, adding that the West has apparently forgotten about the aftermaths of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. "They are simply doing the bidding," she noted.
"It looks incredible that people living on the European continent don’t see what is being done to them. But, again, it is a global manipulation, which is being done right before our very eyes," Zakharova emphasized.
Located in the city of Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is controlled by Russian troops. In recent days, Ukrainian forces delivered several strikes at its territory using unmanned aerial vehicles, heavy artillery and multiple rocket launch systems. It most cases, such attacks are repelled by air defense systems but several shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of the nuclear waste storage.
The Zaporozhye NPP is Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant. With a capacity of around 6,000 megawatt, it generated a fourth of Ukraine’s electricity. Since 1996, it was part of Ukraine’s Energoatom generating company. In March 2022, control over the nuclear plant came over to Russian forces. Now, the plant is operating at 70% of its capacity due to the oversupply of electricity on the liberated territories of the Zaporozhye region. It is planned to supply electricity from the plant to Crimea.