Front line evacuations around the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant provoked safety warnings by the body of UN nuclear control on Saturday, as a series of recent attacks raise predictions of an imminent spring counteroffensive.
Moscow has ordered families with children and the elderly to temporarily evacuate a number of Russian-controlled areas in southern Ukraine, including enerhodarthe city near the Europe’s largest nuclear power plantalleging the intensification of shelling by kyiv.
“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is becoming more and more unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi. “I am extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant.”
While the staff of the nuclear power plant remain at its facilities, the IAEA experts “have received information that the announced evacuation of the residents of the nearby town of Enerhodar -where most of the plant’s staff lives- has started and they are closely monitoring the situation in case it could affect nuclear safety”, added Grossi.
The IAEA has repeatedly expressed its worry for the safety of the six reactor plant in southern Ukraine, which has been on the front line since Russian forces seized it last year.
The evacuation of Enerhodar is part of a broader eviction order which extends to another 18 front-line towns in the Zaporizhzhia region.
On Sunday, the Kremlin-imposed interim governor in this annexed province, Yevgeny Balitskysaid that Russia had evacuated more than 1,500 citizens from towns close to the front line in the region.
According to the Deputy Prime Minister of Economy of the annexed region, Andrei Kozenkosome 70,000 citizens will be relocatedin an operation that kyiv has described as “forced” transfer.
Evacuation also affects Tokmakan important communications hub in the center of Zaporizhzhia and where Russia fears an attack as part of the counteroffensive it is preparing.
Russian forces control around 70% of the territory of Zaporizhzhyaneighboring the province of Kherson, in whose regional capital, controlled by Ukrainian forces, a curfew is in force until 0300 GMT on Monday.
The withdrawal order has caused “a crazed panic and queues no less crazy” at the entrance checkpoint to the Crimea annexed to Russia, declared Ivan FedorovMayor of Melitopolin Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
With buses taking people every 20 to 30 minutes, he said the stations have run out of gas.
“The partial evacuation that they announced will too fastand there is a possibility that they are preparing for provocations and (for that reason) targeting civilians,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
(With information from AFP and EFE)
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Source-www.infobae.com