MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/. Western politicians’ allegations that they had to talk Russia into organizing the visit by an IAEA mission to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant are not true, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.
"We hear Western countries’ absolutely inadequate assessments of what is going on, which have nothing to do with the real state of things. Many of them are pretending to have been persuading Russia to organize this mission for weeks or pretending that they have finally broken down Moscow’s resistance on this matter. It is an absolute lie, it is twisting of facts," she said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
She recalled that the visit had been agreed in detail with the IAEA as far back as June 3. "The mission’s scale, its tasks, and stage-by-stage plan of its implementation," she explained.
She stressed that although the mission had been agreed nearly three months ago, a number of Western players had been hampering it. Moreover, in her words, the UN Security Department has been acting unconstructively as well.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said earlier that the agency’s mission had been formed and would reach the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant this week. The IAEA inspectors will assess physical damage to the nuclear plant and check its security and safety systems. The Grossi-led mission will also inspect working conditions at the nuclear plant and will take urgent measures to ensure the plant’s security guarantees.
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.