MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has no influence over any potential agreement seeking to stop the Ukrainian army’s shellings of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, because this is beyond its scope, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Rosenergoatom’s CEO, told TASS in an interview on Wednesday.

He stressed that the IAEA was focused primarily on nuclear safety matters.

"The IAEA is objectively unable to influence the actions of the military. This is beyond its competence and real levers of influence. The idea of creating a security zone, which the leadership of this international institution has been pressing for, is a lengthy and very difficult process. The unconditional cessation of artillery shellings, which, as you know, is carried out exclusively by Ukraine, is a mandatory condition," Karchaa said when asked for a comment on the IAEA’s activities regarding the situation at the ZNPP. Creation of a demilitarization zone around the ZNPP, which the IAEA leadership is talking about, "looks more like beautiful rhetoric than an arrangement realistic in combat conditions."

Karchaa stressed that any agreement, without a clear distribution of responsibility for its non-fulfillment between the parties, was doomed to remain a fine declaration that "can be crumpled up and thrown into the wastebasket."

"Unfortunately, the IAEA has very little influence on the achievement of such agreements, decision-making, and enforcement, if at all. Let me say once again: this international institution is meant to keep an eye on nuclear safety in peacetime, and not when a war is on," he concluded.

The ZNPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Russia took it under control on 28 February. In October, the JSC Operating Organization of the Zaporozhye NPP was granted the right to run the facility. The new company’s objective is to ensure the safe operation of the nuclear power plant and the professional activity of the existing personnel with support from the JSC Rosenergoatom Concern (part of the electric power division of Rosatom). In November, all ZNPP personnel received their first paychecks as full-fledged members of the Russian nuclear power community. The power plant’s former chief engineer, Yury Chernichuk, was appointed the ZNPP’s CEO.