Ukraine's president met in Kyiv on August 30 with a team of UN nuclear inspectors ahead of their planned journey to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in war-torn southern Ukraine, his office said.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi and around a dozen experts reportedly arrived in the Ukrainian capital late on August 29.
They were expected to quickly travel on to Zaporizhzhya but it was not immediately clear if the team would be allowed access to the nuclear site by Russian forces.
According to his office, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Grossi and the inspectors' mission was aimed at vital questions with urgent implications for regional and global safety.
"This is probably one of the top-priority questions regarding safety of Ukraine and the world today," Zelenskiy said, according to his office.
Zelenskiy repeated Kyiv's and the international community's call for the "immediate demilitarization of the plant," which was occupied by Russian forces early in the six-month-old war.
Zelenskiy also said the Soviet-era nuclear plant -- Europe's largest -- should be returned to "full Ukrainian control."
Shelling dangerously close to the reactors, exhausted workers held at gunpoint, and disconnections have intensified fears of a Chernobyl-style disaster that could spread radioactivity far and wide.
The IAEA's experts were set to assess physical damage to the plant, determine the functionality of safety and security systems, evaluate staff conditions and perform urgent safeguards activities, the agency said.
The United States this week said a “controlled shutdown” of Zaporizhzhya is the “safest option” and urged Moscow to agree to a demilitarized zone around the site, echoing an earlier call from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
