International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as they visit Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine March 27, 2023. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS/ File Photo
KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that he will meet the head of the international nuclear agency in Kyiv after the official visits the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that has been in Russia's hands since early in the war.
Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear watchdog, said late on Monday in a post on X that he was on his way to the plant to "to continue our assistance & help prevent a nuclear accident."
The plant in Ukraine's southeast - Europe's largest nuclear power plant and now in "cold shutdown" - fell to Russian troops in the first days of Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Both sides have since frequently accused each other of shelling the plant and both Moscow and Kyiv deny the accusations.
Zelenskiy and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof visited Zaporizhzhia on Monday, a city that lies across the Dnipro's wide riverbed to the northeast of the plant, where the Ukrainian leader repeated his pleas for the West to supply more long-range weaponry to Kyiv.
Zelenskiy said that after Grossi visits the plant, he is set to come to Kyiv for a meeting with the Ukrainian leader, according to a video from Zelenskiy's office on social media.
He also said that at this point of the war, it is not possible for Ukraine to take back control of the plant.
"It is safer for Ukraine to control the Zaporizhzhia plant, but so far, from the point of view of the battlefield, I do not see such possibilities, and those that probably exist, they are dangerous," Zelenskiy said.
Russian agencies reported on Monday that a high-voltage power supply line at the plant automatically disconnected, but the plant's needs are supplied from another line. There was no reason given for the automatic disconnection.
(Reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
