DUBAI, September 2. /TASS/. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not named the perpetrators of attacks on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Russia's borderline region because it intends to independently establish the facts of incidents related to nuclear security, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has said in an interview with Al Arabiya.
According to him, IAEA experts went to the Kursk NPP following reports of attacks received from Russian authorities in order to independently establish the threat to nuclear security. "Obviously, with our mission to protect nuclear safety and security, we had to go there and ascertain the facts there by ourselves," Grossi said. "Precisely, for the sake of objectivity, for the sake of impartiality, for the sake of being precise, and not being speculative, is that the IAEA only informs or confirms when it can independently assess information," he said, replying to a journalist’s question as to why the IAEA is not naming the perpetrators of attacks on nuclear facilities in the zone of the Ukrainian conflict.
The IAEA chief also admitted that the party to the conflict with nuclear facilities under threat has the right to demand that the agency indicate those guilty of violating nuclear safety and security. That said, Grossi assured that the agency will "never hide from the public view" the facts of intentional strikes on nuclear facilities if there is any "irrefutable evidence" at its disposal.
"What I think happens here is a typical phenomenon that we have been seeing since the beginning of this war and maybe on other occasions as well - in the sense that sides are expecting the IAEA to say or to confirm what they would like the agency to say. And on a rational level, I can understand this, but, of course, we have to stay clear from politicizing things or from taking sides and accusing or pointing fingers. When we, as an inspectorate, name names or mention something, it should be when there is undeniable absolute certainty about the origin of an event. In this case, this, of course, is not present. When something there happened, we were not present there," he added.
On August 8, fragments of downed Ukrainian projectiles were discovered on the premises of the Kursk NPP. The following day, a Ukrainian shelling attack damaged an electric substation which triggered emergency blackouts in the nearby town of Kurchatov. On August 22, Ukrainian troops attempted to attack the nuclear facility with a drone which was intercepted and eliminated near the spent nuclear fuel storage facility.