IAEA

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, will try to talk with officials in Kyiv and Moscow about the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the occupied southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe, which the Russians have taken hold of as part of the so-called annexation of the region. For weeks on end, the plant has been the target of intense bombing, for which Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other, and which fueled fears of a nuclear catastrophe. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the military situation will „stabilize” in the annexed Ukrainian territories, where his forces are suffering a series of setbacks against Kiev’s army. Ukraine had announced that it had again gained ground in the Luhansk region (east), after the successes in Kherson (south) and Kharkov (northeast). In what analysts call a sign of confusion in Russia, the army’s failures prompted a senior parliamentary official, deputy Andrei Kartapolov, a former military commander, to ask defense ministry chiefs to „stop lying” about the defeats. (LS