LVIV | Ukrainian Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met in Lviv on Thursday to discuss the latest deal on the export of Ukrainian grain and the safety of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the fate of which is worrying the world.
• Also read: Zelenskyy calls on the UN to ensure the “safety” of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant
President Zelenskyy said on Thursday that the visit of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Lviv was a “strong message of support” for his country.
In the morning, the Russian army assured that it had not used “heavy weapons” in and around the Zaporijia power plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe.
Ukraine, which invokes the presence of Russian “heavy weapons,” also accuses Russia of using the plant as a launching pad for Ukrainian positions, which Moscow denies.
Conversely, Russia says the Ukrainian military plans to fire its artillery at the facility and then accuse it of causing a nuclear accident.
The plant has been occupied since the beginning of March and has been the victim of bombing since the end of July, of which Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other.
The UN must “ensure the security of this strategic location, its demilitarization and its complete liberation from Russian troops,” Zelenskyy said in the afternoon, denouncing the “premeditated terror” provoked by Russia, which “can have great catastrophic consequences for the whole world.” “.
For his part, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba announced on Twitter that the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, informed him that he was ready to go to the Zaporijjia power plant to head a delegation.
deadly fights
“He informed me that he was ready to lead an IAEA delegation to the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant at the invitation of Ukraine,” said Mr. Kouleba.
The day before, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had classified such an IAEA inspection as “urgent”.
Meanwhile, fighting continues in the Kharkiv region (northeast), where Ukrainians have accused the Russians of shelling residential areas, killing six and wounding a total of dozens there on Thursday after 13 the previous evening.
“Last night and this morning were the most tragic times in Kharkiv since the war began,” its mayor Igor Terekhov said, signaling that Friday would be a day of mourning for the victims.
Located about forty kilometers from the Russian border, this city, the second largest in Ukraine, is regularly bombed by Russian soldiers who never managed to take it. According to the authorities, hundreds of civilians were killed in this region.
In the south, one person died and two others were injured and hospitalized after a strike in Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych announced.
On the diplomatic front, Antonio Guterres has been in Ukraine since Wednesday, the Ukrainian President said.
“We will work together to achieve the necessary results for Ukraine,” Zelenskyy added, calling for more financial and material aid to his country and tougher sanctions against Moscow.
The meeting of Zelensky, Erdogan and Guterres comes amid mounting negotiations to allow grain exports to resume from Ukraine, one of its top producers and exporters in the world.
New devices
They were blocked for several months after the Russian invasion, raising the specter of a global food crisis.
In July, an agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine and endorsed by the United Nations and Turkey allowed these exports to resume.
Mr Erdogan, posing as a mediator on the issue, traveled to Russia in early August to speak to President Vladimir Putin about it.
A first humanitarian ship chartered by the UN, loaded with 23,000 tons of wheat, left Ukraine for Ethiopia on Tuesday.
A ship loaded with grain left that country on Thursday, the 25th since the deal was signed, Ukrainian port authorities said.
In total, “more than 600,000 tons of Ukrainian agricultural products” have since passed through the “grain corridor” from the ports of Odessa, Pivdenny and Chornomorsk, they added.
However, a Russian ship carrying stolen Ukrainian grain has arrived in Syria, the Ukrainian embassy in Lebanon said Thursday after several grain trucks caused controversy by docking in the war-torn country.
Ukraine regularly accuses Russia of looting grain stores after invading its territory.
On Friday, Mr Guterres plans to travel to Odessa and then to Turkey to visit the Joint Coordination Center (JCC), which oversees the agreement’s application.
Russia also said it deployed planes carrying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles to Kaliningrad on Thursday, a Russian enclave surrounded by NATO countries where the conflict in Ukraine has heightened tensions.