The US is calling on Russia to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to stay as long as needed to inspect the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
“It’s important that those inspectors are given unfettered access and allowed to do their job -- and to stay as long as they need to stay to be able to report back,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power.”
“The danger could be so much bigger, not just to the people of Ukraine, but even to the region,” Kirby added.
The nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s biggest, has become a flash point in the war. The facility was captured by Russian troops, and there has been continued fighting around the plant, including shelling, which both sides blame on the other.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, last month said military action around the plant raised the “very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”
Grossi and an IAEA team arrived Thursday to inspect the facility. Grossi left after a brief visit, but other members of the team remain at the plant.
Why Ukraine’s Big Nuclear Plant Raises Worries Again: QuickTake
Kirby also said Russia is grappling with maintaining a sizable and motivated army, after suffering significant causalities in its six-month-long invasion of Ukraine. As many as 70,000 to 80,000 Russians have have been wounded or killed, according to an estimate from a Pentagon official last month.
“We know that he is having a manpower issue,” Kirby said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s also having, quite frankly, command-and-control issues on the ground, unit cohesion and morale, and battlefield performance issues in Ukraine, by using this largely conscript force that doesn’t have the same will to fight that the Ukrainians do.”
“Mr. Putin is going to extraordinary lengths to try to recruit and retain soldiers for this fight, even to the point where he’s turning to prisons, and he’s upping their recruitment age well into the 50s,” Kirby added.
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