Russia’s Lavrov Digs In On Keeping Control Of Zaporizhzhia Plant

Russia hasn’t received a US proposal to give up control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeast Ukraine, and a change to the facility’s ownership isn’t conceivable, said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

His comments were consistent with the foreign ministry’s declaration in March that Moscow won’t cede control of the plant or agree to operate the facility jointly with another state.

The currently-defunct atomic plant, Europe’s largest, has been occupied by Russia since the first weeks of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022.

ZNPP, near the town of Enerhodar, is now controlled by Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, with monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, rotated into the facility.

Lavrov said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation — conducted last week and broadcast on Sunday — that safety requirements for the plant “are fully implemented and it is in very good hands.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in March that if the US helped to return the power plant to Ukraine and invest in it, Washington and Kyiv could work together. He estimated it will take years of costly repairs to safely return Zaporizhzhia to operation.

The facility has come up as part of a Trump administration effort to boost cooperation with Russia’s energy sector as it pushes for a deal to end the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg has reported. One proposal would see the US take over the plant, to be considered Ukrainian territory, with any electricity generated supplied to both Ukraine and Russia.

“We never received such an offer,” Lavrov told CBS. “I don’t think any change is conceivable.”

Source: Bloomberg Europe