ISTANBUL

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, currently under Russian control, has lost all off-site power, calling the situation “extremely precarious.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on X, citing Rafael Grossi, that the plant lost all external electricity as 5.36 pm local time (1456GMT).

This marks the ninth power outage at the facility since the start of the conflict and the first since late 2023, he said.

The plant “currently relies on power from its emergency diesel generators, underlining (the) extremely precarious nuclear safety situation," Grossi said.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Ukrainian forces carried out drone attacks on the plant last week and called on the IAEA to respond.

“We regret that the IAEA Secretariat has remained silent on these actions by Kyiv. We will demand that international organizations, including the IAEA and the United Nations, properly assess the criminal acts of the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova said.

Ukraine, then still part of the USSR, was the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.