After weeks of fraught negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, the International Atomic Energy Agency has assembled a team of experts to visit the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine — Europe’s largest nuclear power station — as early as next week.
A list of the team’s members seen by The New York Times includes the nuclear agency’s chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina, and 13 other experts from mostly neutral countries. Neither the United States nor Britain, countries that Russia scorns as unfairly biased because of their strong support for Ukraine, is represented.
Despite mounting international anxiety over a possible catastrophe at the sprawling plant, which is now in the middle of a war zone, Russia and Ukraine have for weeks stalled on letting inspectors visit it, haggling over the composition of an inspection team and whether it would travel to the plant through territory occupied by Russian forces or controlled by the government in Kyiv.
The Ukrainians have insisted that the inspectors start out from government-controlled territory, to avoid giving legitimacy to the Russian occupation. That means the inspectors would have to pass through frontline positions where shelling is frequent and would likely use a crossing point already crowded with civilians fleeing the fighting and nuclear dangers. Any deal would likely require a cease-fire along the route.
Ukraine and Russia both say they support the work of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog but have ignored pleas to withdraw military forces from the plant and its vicinity to create a demilitarized zone. Russia seized the facility, which comprises six nuclear reactors, in March at the start of its invasion but Ukrainian engineers still operate it, often working at gunpoint.
The I.A.E.A. mission includes experts from Poland and Lithuania, nations seen as friendly by Ukraine, but also others from Serbia and China, which Ukraine views with deep suspicion because of their cozy relations with Moscow.
The remaining 10 members are from countries that have mostly stood on the sidelines of the war in Ukraine or that have kept channels open with the Kremlin. They include Albania, France, Italy, Jordan, Mexico and North Macedonia.
The I.A.E.A. headquarters in Vienna declined to comment on the planned mission. A spokesman confirmed that the agency was “in active consultations for an imminent I.A.E.A. mission” to the plant.
A senior diplomat familiar with the negotiations said that Russia had given its approval to the inspection team and indicated that it had acceded to Ukraine’s demand that the mission originate in territory it controls rather than in Russian-occupied land.
Lana Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, told a local news outlet on Thursday night that the inspection was planned for next week, but she added there were important details still to be worked out, including plans to guarantee the safety of the inspectors.
Russia and Ukraine each blame the other’s military operations for endangering the Zaporizhzhia plant and raising the risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Moscow, which controls the facility and uses artillery stationed near it to shell Ukrainian positions, has faced growing pressure to let inspectors visit.
France said on Aug. 19 that progress had been made in getting Moscow to drop its demand that international inspectors travel through Russian-controlled territory, a nonstarter for Ukraine. After a phone conversation between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Emmanuel Macron of France, the French presidency said that Russia had “reconsidered” its demand.
The Russian presidency, in its own account of the conversation, said only that “both leaders noted the importance of sending an I.A.E.A. mission to the power plant as soon as possible” and that Russia had “confirmed its readiness to provide the necessary assistance to the agency’s inspectors.”
