By Annabelle Timsit for The Washington Post
A “support and assistance mission” from the International Atomic Energy Agency is “on its way” to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, the head of the organization said Monday, after Russian forces struck perilously close to the plant, according to Ukrainian officials. Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Key developments
IAEA inspectors are headed to Zaporizhzhia as a result of complex negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations-linked agency amid rising international concern that strikes around the plant could cause a nuclear accident. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi tweeted Monday that a mission to Zaporizhzhia would reach the site “later this week.” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, said Russia was involved in preparing the mission, state news outlet RIA Novosti reported.
Kyiv expects the mission to find that Russia is violating “nuclear safety protocols” at the plant, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday during a news conference in Stockholm. The Group of Seven’s Non-Proliferation Directors Group welcomed news of the mission and said in a statement that it remains “profoundly concerned by the serious threat the continued control of Ukrainian nuclear facilities by Russian armed forces pose to the safety and security of these facilities.”
Ukrainian officials reported more strikes around the Zaporizhzhia plant. Ten people were injured Sunday, including four of the plant’s workers, in shelling that hit the city of Enerhodar, where the facility is located and many of its workers live, according to Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear power company. Shelling on Sunday in Nikopol, across the Dnieper River from the plant, left at least one dead, five injured and more than 2,600 families without electricity, according to the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced an update in its investigation into the killing of Daria Dugina. The daughter of Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin died when a bomb exploded in the car she was driving outside Moscow last week. The FSB, which blamed Ukraine’s special services for the incident, claimed Monday to have identified another Ukrainian national involved in making the explosive device that detonated in Dugina’s car. Ukrainian officials have denied any responsibility for the killing and suggested it could be the result of internal tensions within Russia.
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Iryna Dmytrieva with her daughter, Elizaveta. (Iryna Dmytrieva)
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