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Russia cautions IAEA over Kiev stashing arms at nuke plants — envoy

With the recent deployment of IAEA specialists to all Ukrainian nuclear power plants, the agency has capacities for effective monitoring, Mikhail Ulyanov said

MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. Moscow is calling on the IAEA Secretariat to be vigilant over information that the Kiev regime is storing Western-made weapons on the premises of nuclear power plants, Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said in an interview with TASS.

"Naturally, we continue to maintain contact with the leadership of the IAEA Secretariat on this issue and we urge it to stay vigilant. Especially since with the recent deployment of IAEA specialists to all Ukrainian nuclear power plants, the agency has capacities for effective monitoring," the envoy stressed.

On January 23, the press office of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said that Ukraine’s armed forces had been storing Western-supplied ammunition, in particular, HIMARS rockets, at nuclear power plants. It noted that the Ukrainian military calculated that the Russian armed forces, being aware of the danger of a nuclear disaster, would not deliver strikes on nuclear power plants but if a large-scale detonation of depots and the destruction of a nuke plant occur through the fault of yet another stray Ukrainian air defense missile, they can always pin the blame on Moscow for the tragedy. On January 24, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said that the agency’s inspectors had not uncovered any military equipment at the Ukrainian nuclear facilities.

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Foreign policy IAEA

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