UN Team Arrive Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant

KYIV, Ukraine—United Nations inspectors arrived in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday ahead of an inspection of the nearby Russian-occupied nuclear-power plant, at the southern Ukrainian facility amid fears that fighting in the area could lead to a nuclear disaster.

“The main work begins tomorrow,” said Rafael Grossi, director general of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, who is leading the mission. The plant is in the town of Enerhodar, about 75 miles from Zaporizhzhia. The team was expected to attempt to cross front lines to enter the plant on Thursday.

Asked whether inspectors would be able to speak freely to workers at the plant, Mr. Grossi said: “We are a team of very experienced people. We will have a pretty good idea of what is going on.”

Russian forces have occupied the plant, Europe’s largest, and stationed military equipment there since the early stages of the war, while Ukrainian workers continue to operate it, effectively at gunpoint, according to Ukrainian officials.

According WSJ, the plant has undergone heavy shelling in recent weeks that has damaged its laboratory and chemical facilities, and nearby fires temporarily disconnected it from the country’s power grid. Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for the strikes, trading opposing narratives about a plant that Russia has largely closed off from the world since its capture.

The 14-person IAEA team arrived in Ukraine late Monday, but its travel plans were complicated by the launch of Ukraine’s new southern offensive and final questions over the security and parameters of the inspection, according to Ukrainian officials.

Mr. Grossi said earlier Wednesday that the IAEA team would be at the plant for a few days, and that the length of the visit would be decided by the agency.

“We have a very, very important task there,” he told reporters in Kyiv before the team departed for Zaporizhzhia. “To assess the situation there, to help stabilize the situation as much as we can.”

Russia’s permanent representative to the U.N. agencies in Vienna, including the IAEA, Mikhail Ulyanov, said in a tweet that Russia supported the IAEA’s plan for a permanent presence at the facility.

The IAEA’s mission, which will assess damage, check safety and security systems and evaluate staff conditions, is its most important since Chernobyl in 1986, after the catastrophic accident that spewed radioactive dust across Europe.

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Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said Tuesday that he hoped the U.N. could set up a permanent mission that would monitor the plant and offer another outlet to communicate and keep the plant secure.

“[The workers] are physically and morally exhausted,” he said. “It’s important to see there are people they can communicate with, not only Russian soldiers with guns.”