Mr President,

Ukraine greatly appreciates the continued attention of the General Conference to the nuclear safety, security and safeguards situation in our country and its consistent support for the fundamental principle that Ukrainian nuclear facilities, including the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, must operate safely and securely under the full sovereign control of Ukraine.

We are equally grateful to Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and the IAEA Secretariat for everything the Agency has been doing throughout these years: for maintaining its continuous presence at all five nuclear sites in Ukraine, for the work of IAEA experts on the ground, for substantial technical assistance provided with the support of Member States, and for the persistent efforts to prevent further deterioration of nuclear safety, including through arrangements for temporary localized ceasefires that enabled essential repair works on the power lines connecting the ZNPP to the Ukrainian electricity grid.

This work has made a real difference. It has helped preserve channels of independent information, supported the resilience of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities and, on more than one occasion, contributed directly to restoring safety functions that had been jeopardized by the war.

Over the past years, the General Conference and the Board of Governors have also established a clear and consistent position on the source of these risks and on what is required to address them. Unfortunately, the Russian Federation has chosen not to listen to that collective voice.

Instead of implementing the decisions of the Board and this General Conference, Russia has continued its occupation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, maintained its military presence there and progressively degraded the conditions necessary for the safe operation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The latest report of the Director General leaves little room for comforting interpretations: some of the Seven Indispensable Pillars remain compromised, fully or partially, at all five Ukrainian nuclear sites; the situation at the ZNPP remains particularly fragile; and the Agency concludes that developments during the reporting period suggest a further erosion of the layers of defence supporting nuclear safety and security.

Mr President,

Four years of Russian occupation have transformed the ZNPP from one of Europe’s largest electricity-generating facilities into a nuclear installation whose overriding task today is simply to preserve adequate safety under continuously degraded conditions.

During the latest reporting period alone, the plant experienced ten losses of off-site power, bringing the total since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion to twenty-six. For much of that period, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant depended on a single external power line, while maintenance of safety-related equipment was delayed, the off-site radiation monitoring network continued to deteriorate, and the Agency warned that reduced monitoring capability could delay the detection and assessment of a radiological release and the implementation of necessary protective actions.

All six reactors remain in cold shutdown, and there is a certain bitter irony in recalling how frequently Russian officials once spoke about bringing them back into operation. After what Russia has done to this plant, the serious professional discussion is no longer about when the reactors might be restarted, but about how to prevent further degradation and keep six cold-shutdown units safe amid unstable external power supply, disrupted maintenance, the absence of legitimate Ukrainian regulatory control and continuing military activity.

No responsible nuclear professional can seriously discuss restarting the reactors while these conditions persist. Any future return to generation will require the plant first to be returned to Ukrainian control, subjected to comprehensive inspection and safety assessment, and brought back into compliance with the requirements of Ukraine’s competent regulatory authority. Four years of Russian occupation have not brought the ZNPP closer to electricity generation; they have pushed it further away.

This inevitably raises another question: if Russia is steadily destroying the value of the ZNPP as a functioning nuclear power station, why is the occupation still so important to it?

Part of the answer is increasingly evident.

Russia tells the Agency that the military personnel present at the ZNPP are there to protect the facility. We hear explanations about Rosgvardiya providing physical security and Russian military specialists performing radiological, chemical and biological protection functions. At the same time, Ukrainian defence and intelligence authorities continue to document Russian military activity at and around the ZNPP and occupied Enerhodar, including the deployment of military equipment and infrastructure and the launch and support of Russian UAV operations against Ukrainian-controlled communities on the opposite bank of the Dnipro. Ukraine has regularly provided relevant information to the IAEA Secretariat because such activity directly affects the implementation of the Director General’s Five Concrete Principles and the nuclear safety and security of the plant.

The contradiction is increasingly difficult to conceal. Russia describes its military personnel as being present solely to protect a civilian nuclear facility, while Ukrainian forces document military operations being conducted from the area in which that facility is located.

The military logic behind Russia’s continued occupation is therefore becoming clearer. The ZNPP provides Russian forces with an exceptionally protected environment precisely because it is a nuclear power plant. Moscow knows that Ukraine must exercise extraordinary restraint around the facility and take into account not only an immediate military threat but also the potentially catastrophic consequences of any action affecting nuclear safety.

In other words, Russia is exploiting the special protection that a civilian nuclear facility should enjoy in order to provide protection for its own military activities.

The development of drone warfare makes this issue even more important. Military use of a nuclear site today cannot be assessed solely by looking for tanks or artillery pieces. UAV launch positions, control antennas, communications equipment and other relatively small infrastructure can directly support combat operations. The Five Concrete Principles must therefore remain capable of addressing the realities of modern warfare: equipment used to launch, guide or support attack drones does not become compatible with the protection of a nuclear facility merely because it is smaller or less visible than traditional heavy weaponry.

This is also why unrestricted IAEA access matters so much. The latest report of the Director General again acknowledges that restrictions on access and information limit the Agency’s ability to independently assess all aspects of nuclear safety and security at the ZNPP and to determine whether the Five Principles are being observed at all times. Russia cannot control access to the occupied plant, determine which areas IAEA experts may inspect and then invoke the absence of IAEA observations from places the Agency cannot freely access as evidence against information provided by Ukraine.

Mr President,

The occupation has been equally destructive for the people who kept this plant safe long before Russian troops arrived.

The Third Indispensable Pillar requires operating personnel to be able to perform their duties and make decisions free of undue pressure. Yet Russia’s occupation of the ZNPP has been accompanied from the outset by intimidation, coercion, abductions and unlawful detention of Ukrainian personnel. Ukrainian authorities have documented cases of ZNPP employees and residents of Enerhodar being deprived of liberty, subjected to pressure and torture, while the occupation administration has sought to force Ukrainian nuclear professionals to accept Russian employment arrangements and Russian authority.

This cannot be separated from nuclear safety. A genuine safety culture cannot exist where a nuclear worker must consider whether a professional decision, refusal to obey an unlawful instruction or simple loyalty to his or her country may result in interrogation, detention or disappearance. This is why the provision in our draft resolution calling for the release of all unlawfully detained Ukrainian ZNPP personnel is not merely a humanitarian appeal; it is directly connected to restoring one of the fundamental conditions for the safe operation of a nuclear facility.

Mr President,

Nor can we any longer pretend that the nuclear danger created by Russia is confined to the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Over the past two years, Russia has progressively crossed boundaries that many of us once assumed even this war would not cross.

On 14 February 2025, a Russian drone struck the New Safe Confinement over the destroyed Unit 4 of the Chornobyl NPP, seriously damaging a structure built through decades of international effort and enormous financial and technical contributions from many countries represented in this hall. This was not merely damage to Ukrainian infrastructure; it was an attack on one of the most important international nuclear safety projects ever undertaken.

Then, on 7 June this year, another Russian UAV struck the Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility near Chornobyl. Buildings were damaged, including premises used by IAEA personnel. Fortunately, the Agency confirmed that no spent fuel was affected and that there were no immediate radiological consequences. But nuclear safety cannot be based on the assumption that we will simply continue to be fortunate every time another Russian drone reaches nuclear-related infrastructure.

There is also a disturbing symbolism in what happened in Kyiv this year. Forty years after the Chornobyl disaster, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Director General Grossi visited the National Chornobyl Museum and opened a renewed exhibition dedicated to preserving the memory and lessons of that catastrophe. Weeks later, another massive Russian attack on Kyiv critically damaged the museum and destroyed part of the collection preserving that memory.

Russia has now damaged the structure built to contain the consequences of the Chornobyl accident, attacked a facility designed to safely store spent nuclear fuel, and damaged the institution dedicated to preserving the memory of the catastrophe itself. These events should not be viewed in isolation, because together they demonstrate an increasingly dangerous disregard for nuclear facilities, nuclear-safety infrastructure and the enormous international investment made over decades to protect present and future generations from nuclear risk.

Mr President,

It is against this background that Ukraine and the co-sponsors are bringing the draft resolution “Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguards in Ukraine” before this General Conference.

Its purpose is neither rhetorical nor punitive. It addresses the practical conditions necessary to reduce nuclear risk: restoration of full sovereign Ukrainian control over the ZNPP, withdrawal of unauthorized military and other personnel, unrestricted and timely access for ISAMZ, release of unlawfully detained Ukrainian ZNPP personnel, reliable off-site power supply, continued IAEA presence at all five Ukrainian nuclear sites, continued technical assistance to Ukraine and continued reporting by the Director General for as long as these risks persist.

Most importantly, the resolution ensures that four years of Russian non-compliance do not gradually turn into international acceptance of the consequences of that non-compliance.

The General Conference has already established what is required for the ZNPP to be safe and secure. Russia has chosen not to comply. Our response cannot be to lower the standards until Russian behaviour eventually fits them; it must be to preserve the standards that this Agency and its Member States have spent decades building.

Ukraine therefore calls on every delegation to support the draft resolution.

By doing so, Member States will reaffirm that a civilian nuclear power plant cannot be turned into a protected platform for military activity; that nuclear personnel cannot be intimidated, coerced or held hostage; that IAEA access cannot depend on the discretion of an occupying power; and that the military seizure of a nuclear facility can never become an accepted method of changing its ownership, regulation or sovereign status.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was, is and will remain a Ukrainian nuclear facility. Its return to the full control of Ukraine and its competent authorities remains the only credible path towards restoring a sustainable nuclear safety, security and safeguards regime at the site.

Thank you, Mr President.