MELITOPOL, May 26. /TASS/. Ukraine is plotting a provocation at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to put the blame on Russia and cut short the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission, Vladimir Rogov, leader of the We Are Together With Russia movement, told TASS on Friday.
"Ukraine is announcing this strike in order to accuse us - and this is obvious, so that IAEA inspectors are not present [at the station] any longer," he said, commenting of allegation by the Ukrainian defense ministry’s main intelligence directorate that Russia was hatching a provocation at the nuclear facility.
He noted that tensions around the Zaporozhye NPP have been growing in recent time. "Moreover, the rotation of the IAEA experts [at the ZNPP] has been postponed again. Vasilyevka is under shelling all the time: they are using artillery, HIMARS [multiple rocket launchers], and so on. Plus, an attempted terror attack on a journalist from federal mass media in Enerhodar to demonstrate that the situation in the city is too bad to visit it," Rogov said.
Kiev is drawing attention to this topic, which means that it "is really plotting something," he said. "Bearing in mind that they have both Grom-2 and Storm Shadow, and other weapons they can use, if the announce that, it is highly likely that they already have a scenario. The more so as we know that the main intelligence directorate is supervised by British special services and the Britons are top league of provocations in international affairs," he added.
Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, told TASS earlier on Friday that Ukraine had once again derailed the rotation of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) due to take place on Friday following a postponement. In his words, no date has been appointed as of yet. The ninth team of IAEA experts was to arrive at the ZNPP on May 25. According to Karchaa, Kiev has once again demonstrated the lack of interest in ensuring nuclear security as the Ukrainian authorities are indulging in "shady games, which have no relations to nuclear energy.".