Published: Less than 10 min ago
42 countries, including Sweden, demand that Russia immediately return control of the occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant to Ukraine.
“We call on Russia to immediately withdraw its military forces and other unauthorized personnel from the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and its immediate surroundings,” the NTB news agency said in a statement.
Among the signatories are the EU member states, the USA, Great Britain, Norway, Japan and several others.
It also points out that the Russian military presence poses a “great danger” to the maintenance of the seven pillars of nuclear safety developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Kyiv and Moscow have repeatedly accused each other of attacks on the nuclear power plant, which is the largest in Europe.
Russia’s envoy to Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is headquartered, called on Ukraine on Sunday to stop shelling the facility so that inspectors from the IAEA can be released.
– An international team cannot be sent to work under continued artillery fire, Mikhail Ulyanov said, according to the state-run Russian news agency Tass.
The statement came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on Saturday that the risk of a disaster was increasing every day, a message later echoed by the mayor of Energodar, the city where the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is located.
– What is happening now is nuclear terrorism, and it can have an unpredictable end at any second. The risks are increasing every day, Dmytro Orlov told AFP.