The head of Ukraine’s state nuclear operator Energoatom, Petro Kotin, said he sees signs that Russian troops are preparing to leave the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which they seized shortly after the invasion in March, Reuters and the Kyiv Independent reported.

Such a move would be a major change on the battlefield in Ukraine’s partially occupied southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, where the front line has not changed significantly for several months and constant shelling around the nuclear power plant has raised fears of a nuclear disaster.

“In recent weeks, we have actually received information that there are signs that they are probably preparing to leave (the plant),” Petro Kotin, head of Energoatom NAEC, told national television.

“First of all, there are a lot of reports in the Russian media that it would be better to leave (the station) and maybe it would be worth transferring control (of it) (to the International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA). ),” he said, referring to the UN.

Russia and Ukraine, home to the world’s worst nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, have for months blamed each other for bombing the Zaporizhia reactor complex, which no longer produces electricity.

When asked if it is too early to say that Russian troops will leave the plant, Kotin replied that “it is too early, but we can say that they are preparing.”

Russian forces rushed to the scene with military equipment, personnel and trucks, “probably with weapons and explosives,” and mined the area of ​​the plant, Kotin said.

According to IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, on November 22, IAEA experts found that despite frequent bombings at the Zaporizhia NPP, the main equipment remained intact and there were no immediate nuclear safety issues.

IAEA Director Rafael Grossi met in Istanbul on November 23 with a Russian delegation to discuss the creation of a buffer zone around the nuclear power plant to prevent a possible nuclear disaster.

The day after this meeting, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Serhiy Ryabkov said that the decision to create such a zone should be made “very quickly.”

Zaporizhzhia supplied about a fifth of the electricity in Ukraine.