Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy on Monday thanked the Secretary-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for his support and accused Russia of nuclear blackmail over control of a major nuclear power plant. most of Ukraine.
The allegations came after Zelenksy visited the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions.
“I met the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi. The topic is clear: the security of our energy industry, our nuclear plants. First of all, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which Russia still uses to blackmail the world with radiation,” Zelensky said in his nightly speech from Dnipro on Monday. “No other terrorist has reached such depths in his skepticism, in which Russia is constantly searching and finding a new bottom.”
Zelensky said that Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant threatens global security.
“Keeping a nuclear power plant hostage for more than a year is the worst thing that can happen in the history of Europe and in the global nuclear energy sector as a whole,” he said. “The longer Russia continues to occupy the ZNPP, the greater the threat to the security of Ukraine, the whole of Europe and the world will be.”
“I am grateful to our partners, to Grossi for understanding this and for assisting Ukraine in related matters,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky’s meeting with Grossi came before his visit to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant at the weekend.
Zelensky met with frontline soldiers, visited a military hospital in Zaporizhzhia and witnessed the impact of Russian shelling in Marhanets and Nikopol. He also held a Cabinet meeting in Dnipro.
“I just held a meeting of the General Staff – the first time away, in Dnipro. Right here – in the strategic city of the central part of our country, after visiting Marhanets and Nikopol, Zaporizhzhia, the frontline positions of our fighters in the Zaporizhzhia region,” he said. “Commanders of the combat zones reported the actual situation.”
“Every commander understands that the enemy is responsible for every attack on our cities and villages, on our people. For Sloviansk, for Kostiantynivka and Druzhkivka, for Avdiivka and Toretsk, for all the pain of the Ukrainian people – and not just during the all-out war, but since 2014,” he said.
