ISTANBUL

Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) Director General Alexey Likhachev said Thursday that Moscow would be ready to evacuate its personnel from Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant “if necessary.”

Likhachev said Russia hopes that “the parties to the conflict will maintain their commitments regarding the inviolability” of the facility near Iran’s southern port city of Bushehr, Russian state media reported.

“But, as they say, we are ‘keeping our finger on the pulse’ and, in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense, we will be ready to carry out evacuation measures if necessary,” Likhachev said, according to state news agency Tass.

He described the plant as “the safest place in Iran” during US and Israeli strikes carried out in the summer of 2025.

Likhachev further said Russian President Vladimir Putin personally discussed the safety of the nuclear power plant and its personnel with both US and Israeli officials.

He also warned that a ban on Russian nuclear fuel purchases would “jeopardize” Europe’s nuclear safety and negatively affect the economic performance of its nuclear energy sector.

“We have concerns about this, and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has concerns about this. But I still very much hope that common sense will prevail over the desire to increase the number of anti-Russian sanctions,” Likhachev added.

Regional tensions escalated in June last year after Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on multiple targets across Iran, including military and nuclear facilities, prompting retaliatory strikes by Tehran. The US also bombed three Iranian nuclear sites that month.

Likhachev said at the time that a potential strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant could lead to a “catastrophe comparable” to the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, when an explosion occurred at the plant’s fourth reactor.

The incident, in what is now Ukraine, is considered the world’s worst nuclear disaster.