At 6 pm on September 1, the Director General of the IAEA left the Zaporizhzhia NPP, Energoatom reported. “Most of the members of the delegation left the plant with him”, the company said on its Telegram channel on Thursday evening. Now five representatives of the IAEA mission have remained at the Zaporizhzhia NPP, who are unloading the equipment they brought and will continue to work at the station. “It is expected that they will be at the plant until September 3”, Energoatom informed.

Rafael Marianno Grossi himself stated, after a visit to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, that the “physical integrity” of the station was “violated” after the territory of this Ukrainian nuclear facility was regularly shelled, AFP reports.

He said that he managed to walk around the entire nuclear power plant, to see the key parts of the plant, such as emergency and dispatch systems. Now his team will analyze the technical aspects of what they saw. “We are not going anywhere. The IAEA is there now, at the power plant, and the inspectors are not leaving - they will stay there”, Grossi said. According to him, the experts will provide an unbiased, neutral, technically sound assessment of what is happening at the ZNPP. A problem that worries the world community a lot is the shelling around the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which can damage the plant and cause radiation release. One of the station's reactors had to be shut down on Thursday due to shelling. According to Grossi, he witnessed the shelling. “There were moments when it was obvious that they were shooting: machine-gun fire, mortars. Two or three times it was really very disturbing, I would say, for all of us”, he said.

Grossi also confirmed information that the IAEA is establishing a permanent presence at the site. “I have just completed the first visit to the main places that we wanted to see during the first visit to the site. Of course, there is still a lot to be done”, Grossi said after the visit to the Zaporizhzhia plant.

According to Grossi, during the first hours of the mission, the experts “managed to collect a lot of important information”, and he saw “the key things that he wanted to see”.

As Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the President's Office, commented, “it's strange that the mission lasted two hours. Although the IAEA says that representatives will remain there on a permanent basis. But after 2 hours, especially when the Russians are spinning around you and tell you what and where has been fired, then one could only listen to fairy tales told by the representative of Rosatom and not more.

At the same time, it is reported that inspectors from the IAEA mission moved around the station and communicated with ZNPP employees in the presence of the Russian military and Rosatom employees.

“They took Grossi and the inspectors along their own route, showed “hitting” maps and brought local collaborators to them with statements from “caring citizens” about the need to stop shelling. It was a circus”, ZNPP employees are quoted by the media.

According to them, before the visit of the IAEA representatives to the station, the commander of the combined unit of the Russian Guard of the Russian Federation, who carries out the armed retention of the nuclear power plant, Muradkhan Alderkhanovich Akhmedkhanov, with the involvement of the former worker of the Zaporizhzhia NPP Vlad Lavrik, laid the groundwork with the plant personnel to prevent communication of “random” plant workers with the IAEA representatives. They also put pressure on the management of the station - Acting General Director Igor Murashov and Chief Engineer Yury Chernichuk - regarding aspects of the station's operation in the occupation “permitted” to be covered to the IAEA experts.

When walking along the territory of the station, representatives of the IAEA were constantly accompanied by the citizen of the Russian Federation Karchaa Renat Ivanovich, who did not allow the ZNPP management to communicate with the representatives of the IAEA in private, without control by representatives of the Russian occupation “authorities”.

Karchaa himself, who appears in various positions as a GR manager, a political consultant, an anti-crisis manager in the socio-political sphere, a political scientist, a lawyer, a government manager, is currently represented as an adviser to the general director of the “Rosatom”.

He is also the main suspect in a criminal case under part 4 of article 264 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, where the sanction of the article provides for restriction of freedom for the period of 5 to 12 years with the ban on holding office for a period of up to 3 years. In 2004, in the status of vice-governor of the Murmansk region he hit by the car a 16-year-old teenager to death and fled the scene of the crime.

 On this occasion, the Anti-Crisis Nuclear Expert Center noted that “the motley biography of the specified atomic “expert” and “specialist” who worked in the fields of political science, sociology and external communications of various state structures of the terrorist state indicates the absence of a “bench players” on the Russian side, who would be willing to openly bear responsibility for the armed attack and seizure of a nuclear facility in Ukraine”.

However, back to the results of the mission. Will they meet the expectations of the Ukrainian side? Hardly. According to Podolyak, President Volodymyr Zelensky has clearly indicated what exactly he wants Ukraine to learn from the IAEA mission. Everything can be conditionally divided into several points.

The first is the state of the nuclear reactors that produce electricity that feeds the South of Ukraine.

The second is how the physical security of the Zaporizhzhia NPP operates.

Third, what is the situation with ZNPP personnel: what is their psychological state and whether they can do the work, given that they have been on the territory of ZNPP for several months and they are regularly bullied.

Fourth, whether the Russian troops stationed at the Zaporizhzhia NPP are interfering in the engineering area of the nuclear power plant operation. “If they shoot from there, that's one story. But if they directly intervene, then this poses a significant danger not only for Ukraine, but for the whole of Europe”, the representative of the Office told the president.

It is only known that during a visit to the Zaporizhzhia NPP, members of the mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency found Russian military equipment in the premises of the plant. The corresponding video was shown by Russian propagandists, who came up with an explanation that this was the equipment of the troops supposedly providing radiation and chemical protection of the station.

President Zelensky summed up the visit in this way: “The IAEA mission arrived at the Zaporizhzhia plant. It’s good that this happened, the fact itself, with all the provocations of the Russian military and the cynical shelling of Energodar and the territory of the station. Ukraine did everything to ensure that this mission took place. But it’s bad that the occupiers are trying to turn this IAEA mission – a really necessary one – into a fruitless tour of the station”.

 Zelensky noted that he had agreed with Grossi and members of the mission, that they would be accompanied by journalists from Ukrainian and international media. “Unfortunately, this did not happen. Although it was agreed. Unfortunately, the occupiers did not let the journalists in, but organized a mass meeting of their propagandists. Unfortunately, the IAEA representatives did not protect the representatives of the independent media”, the President of Ukraine said.

Nevertheless, he hopes that the mission will still draw objective conclusions on the circumstances at the station. “And the main thing that should take place is the demilitarization of the station territory. This is precisely the goal of Ukrainian and international efforts. And it’s bad that we have not yet heard the appropriate calls from the IAEA. Although we talked about this with Mr. Grossi at our meeting in Kyiv. This was the key - key! - security point of our agreements: demilitarization and full control by our nuclear scientists”, Zelensky stressed.