Moscow's troops seized the facility -- Europe's largest nuclear power station -- in the first days of its invasion of Ukraine, and both sides have repeatedly accused the other of risking a potentially devastating nuclear disaster by attacking the site.
Staff from the UN nuclear watchdog have been based there since September 2022 to monitor nuclear safety.
Fighting meant the IAEA staff could not be swapped out as part of a planned rotation on Wednesday -- the second such delay in a week -- both Kyiv and Moscow said, trading blame for the incident.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said in a statement: "Russia has once again deliberately disrupted the rotation of IAEA experts at the Zaporizhzhia plant."
Inspectors spend around five weeks at the plant in stints before being swapped out in a complex procedure that involves travelling across the front line under supervision from the Russian and Ukrainian militaries.
Tykhy accused Russia's army of opening fire near where the planned rotation was taking place, saying Moscow's goal was to force the IAEA team to travel through Russian-controlled territory and "violate Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Ukrainian army blocked the IAEA team from travelling to an agreed meeting point and were attacking the area with drones -- at which point the Russian military withdrew its support team and returned to the station.
"On their return, the convoy carrying Russian military personnel and IAEA experts... came under attack by drone and mortar strikes," Zakharova said in a statement.
The IAEA staff members were supposed to leave the station on February 5 in a rotation that was also delayed.
IAEA head Rafael Grossi was in both Ukraine and Russia last week, where he discussed the issue of rotations with officials from both countries.
In a statement, Grossi expressed his "deep regret" over the cancellation of the "carefully prepared and agreed rotation" due to excessive danger, calling the situation "completely unacceptable".
"As a result of these extremely concerning events, I am in active consultation with both sides to guarantee the safety of our teams," he said.
Russia jails men who tried to cut power to nuclear plants
Moscow (AFP) Feb 12, 2025 -
A Russian court sentenced two Ukrainian men to 23 years each on Wednesday for trying to cut power to nuclear plants near Moscow and Saint Petersburg on behalf of Kyiv, a court spokesperson said.
Russia has been hit by a wave of sabotage incidents since attacking Ukraine in February 2022, almost all of which security forces blame on people working for Kyiv.
Oleksandr Maistruk and Eduard Usatenko, born in 1978 and 1974, attempted to blow up "more than 30 pylons on high-voltage power lines to the Leningrad and Kalinin nuclear power plants", Saint Petersburg court service spokeswoman Daria Lebedeva said on Telegram.
"The defendants wanted to shut down the nuclear reactors," she added, accusing them of working on behalf of Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service and of carrying out the attack on the eve of Russia's Victory Day on May 9.
The two men managed to blow up one pylon and planted explosives under 11 others, causing more than $100,000 worth of damage before they were caught, she said.
The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant is less than 70 kilometres (43 miles) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. The Kalinin plant in the Tver region is around 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Moscow.
The two men were each given 23 years in a high-security prison and handed a fine of 900,000 rubles ($9,500).
Both Russia and Ukraine have accused the other of threatening security at nuclear power plants since the conflict began, with Moscow occupying Europe's largest nuclear station in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region.
Last year, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency urged both sides to refrain from attacking power plants, warning that they were never "legitimate targets".
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