After Ukrainian President Zelensky’s mysterious threat a week ago, that Ukraine had to go outside of the IAEA and of any international organization, to get Russia out of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP), the Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, changed his schedule to personally lead a large (11-person) IAEA/UN delegation to the plant. During March, Ukraine has been playing with the last two electrical power lines going into the ZNPP. Manufacturing a nuclear incident assumedly would create a blackmail situation in which Kiev’s Western allies would be ‘forced’ to intervene.
Meanwhile, Grossi says that he’s concentrating on securing agreements not to have the plant subjected to artillery attacks, and probably also to power cutoffs. And Russia has been trying to connect up the plant with an electrical grid system in Russian-controlled territory. Aside from the power line matter, Russia has had engineers construct some sort of protective dome to lessen damage to more sensitive areas from artillery fire.
Yesterday, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the CEO of the Rosenergoatom company managing the plant, explained a new aspect of the extracurricular means that Kiev is employing. He told TASS: “Ukraine has greatly stepped up its psychological war against the employees of the Zaporozhye NPP. Intimidation, blackmail, and threats are rampant. Ukraine is also using financial leverage in a bid to entice the employees into committing acts of sabotage.”
