Russian occupiers gear up for IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi’s visit to Zaporizhzhya NPP

What can the visit of the Director General or his representatives to ZNPP bring? Apparently, there is only one thing – to legitimize the occupation of the power plant caused by the presence of nuclear terrorists there in the eyes of the world community. In order for the IAEA to arrive, record a safe radiation background and control over nuclear materials, approve the state of nuclear and radiation safety, and generally emphasize that everything is fine at the NPP now. Alleging that, all other issues are political, and the IAEA is not involved in politics.

In what way the IAEA mission can get to the power plant is still unknown. Nobody from Ukraine invited them there. First of all – for security reasons.

Are they going to come to ZNPP through russia and then Crimea or other temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories under the protection of the russian military without the will of Ukraine?! This would mean ignoring international law, interfering in political issues after all, but on russia's side, and causing irreparable damage to the agency as the world's leading nuclear security institution, whose image is already quite questionable due to the lack of adequate response to acts of nuclear terrorism, including the seizure of the Zaporizhzhya NPP by ruscists.

At the same time, the IAEA's clear and persistent standpoint on the withdrawal of russian troops, tanks, and other heavy equipment as well as the removal of weapons and ammunition from the ZNPP site, the policy of pressure on russia to liberate the Ukrainian nuclear power plant from invaders and transfer control of the ZNPP to Ukraine is the only way to expedite the visit of IAEA experts to the power plant to confirm its safety and assess the damage caused by the occupiers' criminal activities, as has already been done at Chornobyl NPP.