Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday offered his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin Turkish mediation in settling the crisis over the Russian-occupied Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
“President Erdogan has announced that Turkey can play the role of an intermediary for the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, as it did with the grain agreement,” the export of which was suspended after the Russian invasion of Ukraine for a while before resuming, the Turkish president said in a statement. statement.
And Ukraine announced on Friday that it had bombed a Russian base at Energodar (south), Russia, not far from the station, accusing Russia of withdrawing its weapons before an International Atomic Energy Agency team inspected it on Thursday.
During a meeting in Lvov, Western Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on August 19, Erdogan expressed concern about the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe if these facilities were damaged.
“We’re worried, we don’t want another Chernobyl,” he said, referring to the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine.
The status of the Zaporozhye station, the largest in Europe, captured by Russian forces in March, shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, worries many international leaders. Its location was the target of bombing raids, raising fears of a nuclear holocaust.
On Thursday, after touring the facilities with a team from his organization, International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi said the “physical integrity” of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant had been “violated” by its repeated bombings, stressing that “this is something that cannot go on.” .
But he did not name the responsible party, and the Russians and Ukrainians have been accusing each other of bombing the facility for several weeks now.
Turkey maintains good relations with both Moscow and Kyiv. If Ankara provided military drones to Ukraine, then it refused to join the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
