Sydney - Middle East Times Int’l: THE fate of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine has been described as “very dangerous, says the head of the UN nuclear watchdog.

The nuclear plant has lost external power six times since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, forcing it to use emergency diesel generators to cool its reactors.

Rafael Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the water level in a nearby reservoir controlled by Russian forces was another potential danger. Water from that reservoir is also used to cool the reactors.

“If the reservoir level goes down beyond a certain level, then you don’t have water to cool down the reactors, and we have seen especially in January that the levels of the water were going down significantly,” he said.

“They recovered somehow in the past few weeks.”

He said there had been increasing military activity in the region.

Grossi just met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the Dnipro hydroelectric power station, northeast of the Zaporizhzhia plant.

He said his meeting was an attempt to broker a deal to protect the plant which he said was still alive and that he was adjusting the proposals to seek a breakthrough.

Grossi is pushing for a safety zone to be created at the plant to prevent a possible nuclear disaster as Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of shelling the site. Kyiv does not want a deal that will recognise or allow a Russian military presence at the plant.

“I am confident that it might be possible to establish some form of protection, perhaps not emphasising so much the idea of a zone, but on the protection itself: what people should do, or shouldn’t do to protect (the plant) instead of having a territorial concept,” Grossi said.

In other news from the war:

• Ukraine’s frontline city of Avdiivka “is being wiped off the face of the Earth” amid intensifying Russian shelling, according to its top local official. Russian forces have been making recent gradual gains on the flanks of Avdiivka, and the Ukrainian military said that the city could become a “second Bakhmut”. The city’s utilities will begin to be shut off as “more and more of the town is shelled and destroyed daily,” said Vitaliy Barabash, the city’s military administration head.

• Russia’s 10th tank regiment has borne the brunt of the assault of Avdiivka and likely lost a “large portion of its tanks” while attempting to surround the town from the south, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update. It said the regiment belonged to the 3rd Army Corps, the first major new formation Russia stood up to support its invasion since August 2022 and despite a period of training in Belarus, the formation “appears to display limited combat effectiveness”.

• Ukraine is aiming to exhaust and inflict heavy losses on Russian forces trying to capture the small eastern city of Bakhmut, the commander of Ukrainian ground forces has said. In a video, Colonel Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russia was still focused on the Bakhmut area after months of battle.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited Ukraine’s northern Sumy region during a tour of areas  that have borne the brunt of Russia’s invasion. Zelenskiy met officials and residents in the city of Okhtyrka, which had fierce battles last year but was never occupied, and Trostianets, which was occupied by Russian forces for a month and liberated in March 2022. During the past week, the Ukrainian leader visited the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, parts of which were retaken last year from Russia, to the frontline area near Bakhmut and to Zaporizhzhia in the south.

• Germany’s much-awaited shipment of 18 Leopard tanks has arrived in Ukraine, the German defence ministry confirmed. Berlin promised 14 vehicles but increased it to 18 as part of a deal under which several EU states would contribute to a shipment of two Leopard 2 battalions and 31 American-made M1A2 Abrams tanks from the US.

• The first Brotosj Challenger 2 main battle tanks have arrived in Ukraine and will soon begin combat missions, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said. The UK said in January it would send 14 of the tanks to Ukraine. Reznikov wrote on Twitter that the tanks “recently arrived in our country” and posted a video that showed him sitting in one of a long line of tanks in an open field, all flying Ukraine’s yellow and blue flag.

• The US supports the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of “aggression” against Ukraine, officials said. The US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, Beth Van Schaak said the court might also be located elsewhere in Europe, at least at first, “in order “to reinforce Ukraine’s desired European orientation”.

• Belarus’s foreign ministry has justified its decision to allow Russia to station nuclear weapons on its territory, saying Minsk was acting to protect itself. Minsk had been forced to house Russian nuclear weapons on its territory by the aggressive actions of NATO countries that were threatening Belarus’s own security, it said, according to Russian news agency Tass.

• Belarus will certainly face further EU sanctions resulting from the weapons deal, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said. Poland was considering further limitations on cross-border traffic, he added.