MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. Creating a safety zone around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is not safe until the front line is moved at least 100 kilometers away from the plant, the acting governor of the Zaporozhye Region Yevgeny Balitsky said on Wednesday.·"We cannot create a zone around the station in any way, this is an agreement with the Americans. <...> It makes no sense to negotiate with the subordinate presidents like [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky. Because you can make an agreement today and launch the station, but in four days they will shell it again. It's extremely unsafe to negotiate until we move the front line at least 100 kilometers away from the station. We need to negotiate practically from a position of strength," he said during a Rossiya-24 TV broadcast.
·The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said on Twitter on Wednesday that the repeated shutdown of the nuclear power plant on October 12 was extremely worrying and stressed the need for a safety zone around the plant.
·An IAEA mission led by Grossi visited the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in early September, with agency staff remaining at the plant as observers. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov noted that the Ukrainian armed forces continued shelling the plant despite the presence of IAEA staff there.·Russian President Vladimir Putin, opening a meeting with permanent members of the Russian Security Council on Monday, emphasized that Kiev's missile and artillery strikes against the plant were nothing less than acts of nuclear terrorism. He added that Ukraine's special services had also carried out three terrorist attacks against the Kursk nuclear power plant, blowing up power lines, but that these sorties had no serious consequences.