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UKRAINE: International investigators are prepared in the coming days to inspect Ukraine’s endangered Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as renewed front-line fighting was reported Saturday around the facility.

A team of experts from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is expected to visit the power station this week, according to Ukraine’s energy minister adviser Lana Zerkal. The head of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, was quoted as saying he wants to inspect the site within days, warning of potential disaster.

Officials are concerned about the potential risk of a radioactive leak if certain sections of the massive nuclear complex are hit by weapons fire. Moscow said it supports the work of the IAEA but has refused to withdraw its soldiers from the complex to create a demilitarized zone.

Both Russia and Ukraine have accused its forces of firing artillery shells at Europe’s largest nuclear plant. The state-run energy operator Energoatom said Saturday Russian troops had “repeatedly shelled” the site over the past day.

In countering the claims, Russia’s defense ministry said Ukrainian forces “shelled the territory of the station three times” in the past day. “A total of 17 shells were fired,” the ministry said in a communique.

The Zaporizhzhia facility was seized by Russian troops in the opening weeks of the February invasion and has remained on the front line ever since. The power plant is being operated by Ukrainian workers. The operator of the plant also accused Russian soldiers of torturing workers. Moscow said it supports the work of the IAEA but is refusing to withdraw its soldiers from the plant to create a demilitarized zone.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the situation around the Zaporizhzhia plant remains “very precarious and dangerous” after the plant resumed electricity supplies to Ukraine following an outage. The plant was disconnected from the electric grid for the first time in its history Thursday after a fire caused by shelling damaged a power line.

Zelenskyy said in his address, “Any actions by Russia that could trigger the shutdown of the reactors will once again put the station one step away from disaster.”

The plant needs power to run the reactors’ cooling system, and any extended power failure could put the plant in jeopardy of a meltdown.

The power outage at the plant heightened dread of a nuclear disaster in a country still haunted by the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl.

An engineer working under Russian occupation since March 4 at the nuclear power plant has told VOA that Russian forces have placed artillery and missile installations within and around the property of the plant.

The engineer, whose identity is being withheld for fear of retaliation by the occupying authorities, supports Ukrainian government claims that Russia itself is responsible for the explosions.

Intense battles

Meanwhile, fighting continues to rage in the south and eastern sections of Ukraine. Ukraine said its troops had repulsed Russian assaults on the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region. Reports of the claims could not be independently confirmed.

The heavy fighting comes as nearly three-quarters of Donetsk’s population has been evacuated since the war started. The regional government leader, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Ukraine retains control of about 45 percent of the region. The area has been a flashpoint in the conflict.

In other developments, Ukraine accused Russia of preparing to hold referendums in areas it occupies over whether to join Russia. Ukrainian officials have called the possible vote “a sham.” Ukraine’s security and defense council said anyone who helps to organize Russian referendums will be tried in court and could be sentenced to death.

Also on Saturday, Russia published a decree that makes it easier for Ukrainian citizens to live and work in Russia by scrapping work permits and allowing indefinite residency.

Moscow says 3.6 million Ukrainian nationals, including 587,000 children, have come to Russia since the start of the conflict six months ago.

Earlier this week the United Nations Human Rights Commission estimated more than 5,000 civilians have died and nearly 8,000 have been injured since the start of the war.

(voanews.com)

BEIJING: In his first TV interview since taking up his post in Beijing six months ago US Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns said that China needs to convince the rest of the world it is not an “agent of instability” and will act peacefully in the Taiwan Strait.

He also spoke about recent visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan and China’s aggressive military drills around Taiwan, reported CNN.

“We do not believe there should be a crisis in US-China relations over the visit — the peaceful visit — of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan … it was a manufactured crisis by the government in Beijing. It was an overreaction,” Burns told CNN Friday from the US Embassy.

It is now “incumbent upon the government here in Beijing to convince the rest of the world that it will act peacefully in the future,” the ambassador said. “I think there’s a lot of concern around the world that China has now become an agent of instability in the Taiwan Strait and that’s not in anyone’s interest.”

Burns, a career diplomat and former US ambassador to NATO, arrived in Beijing in March to take up what is arguably the US’ most important diplomatic posting — navigating US-China ties already strained by tensions over a range of issues including China’s human rights record, trade practices and military expansion in the South China Sea.

China’s stringent COVID-19 restrictions have also reduced diplomatic travel into and out of China, placing Burns even more squarely at the front line of handling the increasingly contentious relationship between the world’s two largest economies, reported CNN.

The contentious relationship was evident on the night on August 2, when Burns received a summons for a meeting with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng at what he describes as the exact moment that the plane carrying Pelosi and her congressional delegation landed in Taipei. “I defended the speaker. I defended her right to travel to Taiwan. I defended the peace and stability that we’ve had in the Taiwan Strait for nearly six decades,” Burns said, adding that he challenged Xie to ensure that the Chinese government would act in a way that would “promote peace and stability.”

The US upholds a “One China” policy, but has never accepted China’s ruling Communist Party’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. Washington maintains “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

The Communist Party has long vowed to “reunify” the island, which it has never controlled, with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

China decried the Pelosi visit as a violation of its “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” with Burns’ counterpart, Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang earlier this month saying the US must “bear the responsibilities” for the situation it has created. When asked whether any lessons Beijing may have learned from observing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be applied to Taiwan, Burns said the US is “watching China very carefully as it conducts its relationship with Russia.” China has refused to condemn the invasion or refer to it as such. (ANI)