World

The UN’s atomic watchdog called Tuesday for a security zone to be set up around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russia, as the area was hit by more shelling.

Russian troops seized control of the plant — Europe’s biggest atomic facility — in March and there have been repeated attacks in the vicinity, sparking fears of a nuclear disaster.

“The current situation is untenable,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report after it sent inspectors to the plant last week.

“There is an urgent need for interim measures to prevent a nuclear accident…. This can be achieved by the immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone.”

At the United Nations, Russia said it regretted that the report did not blame Ukraine for the attacks.

“We do understand your position as an international regulator, but in the current situation it’s very important to call things by their name,” Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia told a Security Council session attended virtually by IAEA head Rafael Grossi.

Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for shelling of the site, which took place again Tuesday despite the watchdog’s recommendations.

“If the provocations by the Kyiv regime continue, there is no guarantee that there won’t be serious consequences, and the responsibility for that lies fully with Kyiv and its Western backers and all other members of Security Council,” Nebenzia said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he welcomed the fact that the report noted the Russian military occupation of the plant.

He said that if the proposed security zone was aimed at demilitarizing “the territory of the nuclear power plant… then we can support it.”

Kyiv and Moscow continued to trade blame Tuesday for attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant, and on the city of Energodar where it is situated.

The IAEA sent a 14-person team to the site last week. At least two members were to remain on a permanent basis to ensure the facility’s safety.

But on Monday, the last working reactor was disconnected from the grid after shelling caused a fire.

Meanwhile US President Joe Biden’s administration said it would be counterproductive to brand Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, rejecting calls from Ukraine and lawmakers to take the far-reaching action.

Biden, asked by a reporter on Monday if he would blacklist Russia as a terrorist state, said simply, “no,” after months of non-committal answers from senior officials.

Asked Tuesday whether a decision had been made, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said a terrorism designation was “not the most effective or strongest path forward” to “hold Russia accountable.”

She said the designation would hamper aid delivery to parts of war-ravaged Ukraine or prevent aid groups and companies from participating in a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to ship badly needed grain from Ukraine’s blockaded ports.

– Russia buying rockets – 

Separately on Tuesday, a pro-Kremlin official in the Russian-controlled port city of Berdyansk in southern Ukraine was seriously injured in a car blast, according to Moscow-installed authorities.

In the past months, several officials installed by Russian forces in Moscow-controlled territories in Ukraine have been killed or wounded in attacks.

Kyiv has not formally claimed responsibility.

Ukraine has recently claimed its first gains in a counter-offensive against the Russian army in the south, saying it has recaptured several areas and destroyed multiple targets.

A US official said Tuesday that Russia is buying millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea to replenish stocks depleted by months of intense fighting.

“This purchase indicates that the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions,” the US official said, on grounds of anonymity.

Western sanctions have made it harder for Moscow to acquire components to manufacture replacements, including computer chips.

President Vladimir Putin attended large-scale military exercises Tuesday involving China and several Russia-friendly countries, as Moscow seeks to strengthen partnerships in Asia in the face of Western sanctions. 

And the European Commission laid out the new hurdles facing Russian travellers seeking EU entry visas, in the latest punitive measures taken in response to Moscow’s invasion.

Firefighters raced Tuesday to contain a massive blaze devastating a national park in the Brazilian capital, which is suffering from a heat wave and more than four months of drought.

The fire, which hit the park Monday, has burned through around 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of the 42,000 hectare reserve in Brasilia, according to the national parks service, ICMBio.

Forty firefighters from ICMBio and the Brasilia fire department managed to control one of the fire’s two fronts Monday night.

The blaze is concentrated in an area around 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the presidential offices, the Planalto Palace.

“Severe conditions,” including temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) and critically low humidity of around 30 percent, have exacerbated the already flammable situation left by the drought, ICMBio said.

The Brazilian capital has not had rain in 122 days.

Officials said they did not yet know what caused the fire.

Brasilia National Park was established in 1961, the year after the ultra-modernist capital was inaugurated in Brazil’s central-west — a region with a prolonged dry season that typically runs from May to September.

The Brasilia blaze comes as officials report an alarming surge in fires in the Brazilian Amazon.

Last month was the worst August in 12 years, with 33,116 fires detected in Brazil’s share of the world’s biggest rainforest, according to satellite monitoring by the national space agency, INPE.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who is up for reelection in October, has faced international outcry over a surge of fires and destruction in the Amazon, whose billions of carbon-absorbing trees are a key buffer against global warming.

The UN’s atomic watchdog called Tuesday for a security zone to be set up around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russia and been the site of recent shelling.

Russian troops seized control of the plant — Europe’s biggest atomic facility — in early March and there have been repeated attacks in the vicinity, sparking fears of a nuclear disaster, as both sides trade blame for shelling the site.

“The current situation is untenable,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report after it sent a team of inspectors to the plant last week.

“There is an urgent need for interim measures to prevent a nuclear accident arising from physical damage caused by military means,” the IAEA said. 

“This can be achieved by the immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone,” it added in its report.

“The IAEA recommends that shelling on site and in its vicinity should be stopped immediately to avoid any further damages to the plant and associated facilities,” it said.

Moscow-installed official in Zaporizhzhia Vladimir Rogov criticised the idea of a security zone, saying instead what was needed to protect the plant’s integrity was agreement on implementing a ceasefire.

“In other words, if something happens in the perimetre of the nuclear plant, those who fired will immediately and severely be punished,” the Tass news agency quoted him as saying.

The commissioner for human rights in the Ukrainian parliament Dmytro Lubinets said the report “pays almost no attention to the facts related to the safety of the personnel and the war crimes committed by the Russian servicemen in relation to the employees of the nuclear plant: murder, torture, illegal arrests and criminal prosecution, etc”.

– Humanitarian corridor – 

Russia Tuesday accused Ukraine of repeatedly shelling around the nuclear plant.

There were seven strikes on the territory of the plant, Rogov said on social media. 

“Ukrainian soldiers opened fire on Energodar and its surroundings,” damaging a power line and reducing the capacity of the last working reactor, Rogov said.

In the past 24 hours, the territory of the nuclear plant and its neighbouring city of Energodar were hit 15 times, the Russian defence ministry said in its daily briefing. 

“Kyiv continues its provocations at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in order to create a threat of a man-made disaster,” the ministry added.

Radiation levels around the plant are “normal”, according to the ministry. 

The UN atomic watchdog had sent a 14-person team to the site last week to assess the situation.

At least two members of the team were to remain on a permanent basis to ensure the facility’s safety.

On Monday, the last working reactor at the embattled nuclear plant was disconnected from the grid after shelling caused a fire.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk Tuesday called for a humanitarian corridor to be established for civilians wanting to leave the area around the nuclear plant.

– Sanctions, drills – 

A pro-Kremlin official in the Russian-controlled port city of Berdyansk in southern Ukraine was “seriously” injured in a car blast Tuesday, Moscow-installed authorities said.

The car of city commandant Artem Bardin exploded in “the very centre of Berdyansk”, Rogov said on social media, calling the incident a “terrorist attack”. 

Bardin is in a “serious condition and has been hospitalised”, according to Rogov. 

In the past months, several officials installed by Russian forces in Moscow-controlled territories in Ukraine have been killed or wounded in attacks.

Kyiv has not formally claimed responsibility.

Ukraine has claimed its first gains in a counter-offensive against the Russian army in the south, saying it has recaptured several areas and destroyed multiple targets.

A US official said Tuesday that Russia is buying large amounts of ammunition from North Korea to replenish stocks depleted by months of intense fighting in Ukraine.

“The Russian Ministry of Defense is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for use on the battlefield in Ukraine,” the US official said in a statement.

“This purchase indicates that the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions,” the official said, on grounds of anonymity.

Western sanctions have made it harder for Moscow to acquire components to manufacture replacements, including computer chips.

President Vladimir Putin attended large-scale military exercises Tuesday involving China and several Russia-friendly countries, as Moscow seeks to strengthen partnerships in Asia in the face of Western sanctions. 

And the European Commission laid out Tuesday the new hurdles facing Russian travellers seeking EU entry visas, in the latest punitive measures taken in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ministers from EU member states agreed last week to suspend the 2007 EU-Russia visa facilitation deal, stopping short of an outright travel ban.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp on Tuesday, retracing the footsteps of his father who helped liberate the site as a British army officer in 1945.

Recounting Chaim Herzog’s first moments at the camp — Isaac’s father and former Israeli president — the leader said he “stood on a wooden box, shouting in Yiddish before hundreds of skeletons”.

“‘Jews! There are still living Jews!” Herzog recalled his father saying.

The camp is one of the most notorious of World War II, where over 50,000 people died, including the diarist Anne Frank.     

In 1945, it was covered with barracks that the British army quickly burned down to stop diseases from spreading.

Today, there are huge mass graves covered with grass, on which small stones are placed as tributes for the dead.

Standing next to a stone brought from Jerusalem by Chaim Herzog in 1987 when he became the first Israeli president to visit Germany after World War II, his son Isaac urged the two countries to keep up the fight against anti-Semitism.

“That is our duty. On behalf of the past and for the sake of the future,” he said. 

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who accompanied Herzog on Tuesday’s visit, said it took a long time for Germans to realise that they too were liberated at the end of the war. 

Paying tribute to Chaim Herzog, he said Germany must “never forget the Holocaust”.

– ‘Hell on earth’ –

Bergen-Belsen was one of the first concentration camps to be liberated by the Western Allies, who arrived to find it riddled with disease and about 10,000 unburied corpses.

Those held at the camp included Jews as well as prisoners of war, homosexuals and political opponents.

In a speech earlier Tuesday at the Bundestag, Herzog said he would “never forget how (his father) described to me the horrors” he witnessed at the camp.

“The stench. The human skeletons in striped pyjamas, the piles of corpses, the destruction, the hell on earth.”

During Chaim Herzog’s trip back in 1987, he said: “I bring with me neither forgiveness nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are the dead; the living have no right to forget.”

Isaac Herzog said he brought that same bequest to Germany on the current visit, “etched on my heart”.

At the site now dotted with pine, oak and birch trees, five survivors — Swedish national Jovan Rajs, Israelis No’omi Rinat and Jochevet Ritz-Olewski, American Menachem Rosensaft and German Albrecht Weinberg — also joined the ceremony.

Weinberg, now 97, was 20 years old when Bergen-Belsen was liberated. 

He had spent 60 years in the United States before returning to his city of origin, Leer, in northern Germany, which invited him back and named a school after him.

Weinberg said he goes to the school regularly to recount his experiences to pupils “who cannot understand how something like that could happen”. 

“I am one of the last survivors,” he told AFP.

“As long as I can, I will continue to speak about what happened.”