Russia has formally taken control of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which it has occupied militarily since the beginning of March, according to a decree signed by its President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
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Shortly after this announcement, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, who was planning to travel to Kyiv and Moscow this week, announced his departure for the Ukrainian capital to discuss the creation of a protection zone around the plant. .
The latter, the largest in Europe, is located in the Zaporizhia region, one of the Ukrainian territories formally annexed by Russia last week, not far from the line separating the territories controlled by Kyiv and those occupied by Moscow.
“The government should ensure that the nuclear facilities of the plant (…) are considered federal property,” we can read in the Russian decree.
Ukraine’s Energoatom, for its part, said it considered Vladimir Putin’s decree “null, void, ridiculous and inappropriate.”
“The Zaporizhia power plant will continue to operate in Ukraine, in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, in the Ukrainian power system, at Energoatom,” the company added on Telegram.
And while the administrative management of the station was moved to Moscow on Wednesday, Energoatom was dismayed by the “creation of shell companies in the name of Ukrainian companies”.
This Russian decision shows the “suffering of the crazy fantasy world of the aggressor country”, which further criticized the Ukrainian worker.
Moscow and Kiev accused each other of bombing the site for several months, and these strikes raised the specter of a major nuclear disaster similar to Chernobyl in 1986.
Last weekend, the station’s Ukrainian director, Igor Murashov, was briefly detained by the Russians, before being released. It was announced Wednesday morning that Energoatom’s president, Petro Kotine, has since held the position.
