Vladimir Putin who is the Russian President has on Wednesday made an order to his government that they would be taking over some of the operations at Europe’s largest nuclear power station in the Russia-annexed region of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine in an extension of his annexation plans.
“The government will ensure that the nuclear facilities at the plant… are integrated as federal property,” the executive order said.
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The power station which had also been occupied by some of the Moscow’s forces since March and is close to the front line.
Putin’s decree had also come as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi which he had revealed that he was travelling to Ukraine for talks on the Zaporizhzhia plant.
Grossi will “continue his consultations” on setting up a nuclear safety and protection zone around the power station, the IAEA said Tuesday.
Ukrainian state nuclear agency Energoatom said earlier Wednesday, after the plant’s operating company was moved to Moscow, that Russia was “creating pseudo-enterprises with the names of Ukrainian companies”.
“It’s just a pity that they are trying to involve Ukrainian nuclear professionals, who have been heroically working under… occupation for more than seven months” at the Zaporizhzhia plant, Energoatom said on social media.
Russian forces had also detained the chief of the power station, Ihor Murashov, for two days before releasing him on Monday but Grossi had come out to reveal that his detention and release posed “no risk at all” to operations at the plant.
In another related development, a Nigerian public affairs analyst, Emesakoru Enifome has submitted that the actions of Russian President, Vladimir Putin, grossly violate all norms of international law, adding that there is a double nuclear danger in the region.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), the Europe’s largest nuclear power station, have triggered the first real-world case of a crisis that security scholars have feared for decades – a threat of radiological disaster from a wartime incursion on an operating nuclear power plant.
He said the danger is as a result of a possible technogenic disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant due to provocations and other dangerous activities of the occupiers, and secondly, as a result of threats to use Russian nuclear weapons in the region for the so-called ‘protection’ of allegedly ‘Russian territory’.