Press briefing by Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov following the extraordinary session of the IAEA Board of Governors

Overall, I am satisfied with the session. We wanted to draw attention to the dangerous actions of the Ukrainian side at the Zaporozhskaya NPP, we wanted the Board members to have the opportunity to call for the immediate cessation of such actions, so that they would support the position of the Director General in this regard. This is what happened.

The main problem, of course, is with Western countries. Whatever the Ukrainians do, they are never, under any circumstances, ready to say anything negative about the Ukrainian side. And this looks like indirect encouragement of attacks on Zaporozhskaya NPP, which I also stated during my speech at the meeting.

Time will tell how effective today's meeting was. I still hope that there will be no new attacks. They weren't there yesterday, they weren't there today. I would like to hope that this is also a result of the fact that we convened this event.

Therefore, I would rate the last meeting with a «plus» sign, without overestimating it, of course. But this is what we could and should have done in this situation.

The theses that the Russian side voiced during its speech at the extraordinary session of the IAEA Board of Governors on Thursday were simple: it is necessary to take a responsible approach to ensuring nuclear safety, shooting at nuclear facilities is completely unacceptable, including a violation of the principles formulated by the IAEA Director General.

The Ukrainians carried out regular rocket and artillery attacks directly at the Zaporozhskaya NPP from mid-July to the end of November 2022. Then they stopped. There was nothing for almost a year and a half, and then this extremely dangerous turnaround occurred.

I also drew attention to the fact that the actions of the Ukrainians endanger the lives of civilian personnel of the Zaporozhskaya NPP and IAEA employees, currently there are four Agency employees at the NPP.

In particular, I recalled the episode on April 7, when another drone was approaching the sixth power unit while IAEA employees were on its roof, and only the skillful actions of our military allowed this drone to land - it fell and exploded right next to the sixth power unit. Director General described this episode in one of his statements.

At the same time, noting the quick and harsh reaction of the Director General to what was happening, we stated that a very serious shortcoming is that Rafael Grossi avoids naming the guilty party.

Naturally, we named Ukraine as the guilty party, since we know this 100%, and so did our Syrian friends, Permanent Representative of Syria. The rest, in conditions where there is no official conclusion about the guilt of the Ukrainians from the IAEA, avoided this point. But many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America strongly called for these attacks to be stopped immediately. What, in fact, we wanted to see and hear.

What is prevents the IAEA to name the party guilty of shelling the Zaporozhskaya NPP?

I have a feeling that they are afraid. Ukrainians are, as it were, «untouchables». It is not customary to speak badly about Ukrainians, because, they say, they are victims. An atmosphere has been created that essentially encourages the Ukrainian side to act recklessly, as with these attacks.

Is the Russian side handing over the facts and details of the investigation to the IAEA?

We informed Agency members almost in real time, literally within a few hours, of each attack. Our people at the NPP are leading IAEA inspectors to places where traces and consequences of attacks are visible. We give everything we can to the public space, we send out information circulars that are distributed among all IAEA member states without exception. It’s a difficult situation, the West is standing united and de facto covers up any actions of Kiev. I said at the meeting that considerations of political conjuncture are more important for Westerners than nuclear safety, which they care so much about in words. De facto - yes, this is more important for them. I called on my Western colleagues, if they are afraid to talk about this publicly, at least through bilateral channels they should eventually tell the Ukrainians off. Those who have a certain influence on Kiev could well do this, but, by all indications, they do not.

According to my impressions, I, of course, cannot give exact statistics, the vast majority of those who participated in today’s meeting understand that the shelling was carried out by Ukrainians. Although the latter predictably insist that this is a «Russian false flag operation» and, as always, for propaganda purposes, they are turning the arrows from themselves to us. But it sounded very unconvincing from them.

What was the reaction of the Ukrainian side to the statements?

It was important for the Ukrainians, it seems to me, to switch attention from the shelling of the station to a wider range of related issues. And the Western delegations acted in exactly the same way. From the threat to nuclear safety, which they mentioned briefly, their thoughts instantly flowed into completely different areas. «Russia must withdraw its military personnel from the NPP, from Ukraine». This is a broken record. Our Western opponents clearly have cribs, which were apparently drawn up in Brussels. They repeat each other almost word for word using the same clues. It's boring to listen to.

The UN Secretary General supported Rafael Grossi's statement on the need to stop shelling the NPP. Do you have any expectations from the IAEA head’s scheduled speech at the UN Security Council on Monday, how this might affect the situation around the Zaporozhskaya NPP?

I think that the use of the Security Council platform is quite appropriate and useful. Actually, our Permanent Representative, Vassily Nebenzia, was the first to do this, and then the Slovenians and Americans began asking for a meeting. Here, too, as soon as the Ukrainians learned that we were demanding an extraordinary session, their letter appeared with a similar request. These are procedural games. But I don’t expect anything grand from the event in New York. It will be the same there. The audience is slightly different, but the result is approximately the same as here: a useful discussion for us, highlighting what is happening. But no one except us will name Ukrainians as the guilty party. So all this is quite predictable. But the fact that the UN Secretary General supported Rafael Grossi is good. Actually, it couldn’t be otherwise.

In short, at today’s meeting, many countries with which we maintain good relations, and even many of those who are generally more inclined to support Ukraine, clearly said out loud: «this needs to be put an end to, it’s too dangerous». That's what we wanted.