KYIV. May 8 (Interfax-Ukraine) – In Enerhodar, amid panic moods, the so-called “city authorities” have closed passport offices and some administrative departments, they are taking out documents and equipment, the mayor of the city, Dmytro Orlov, has said.
“All this is happening under the motto “no panic” and “the authorities in the city continue to work,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Also, on Sunday night and in the morning, they began to take out medical equipment from the hospital, which was first sorted and then loaded into trucks.
At the same time, according to Orlov, information that some departments in the hospital stopped providing medical care was received. Against this background, patients in hospitals are invited to evacuate.
The mayor said that the categories of the civilian population announced by the invaders themselves also fell into the first wave. But not everyone agrees to leave.
Orlov said that the first wave of the population evacuation, in particular, citizens who received Russian passports, began on Saturday morning, but it cannot be called mass at present.
“Some of the people who wanted to leave were loaded onto buses. Some left in their own vehicles,” he said.
According to him, fuel at filling stations has run out, ATMs do not work or work with limitations, and there is virtually no place where one can withdraw money, the Internet has partially disappeared.
“But the prices for food and medicines, on the contrary, jumped noticeably,” the mayor said.
Meanwhile, General Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi said that IAEA experts present at the Zaporizhia NPP received information that the announced evacuation of residents from the nearby town of Enerhodar – where most plant staff live – has started.
“They [the IAEA experts] are closely monitoring the situation for any potential impact on nuclear safety and security,” he was quoted as saying in the agency’s press release on its website.
While operating staff remain at the site, Director General Grossi expressed deep concern about the increasingly tense, stressful, and challenging conditions for personnel – and their families – at Europe’s largest NPP, located by the frontline in a southern Ukrainian region that has seen a recent increase in military presence and activity.
The IAEA experts at the site are continuing to hear shelling on a regular basis, including late on Friday, May 5.
“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous. I’m extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant,” Grossi said.
The IAEA experts at the ZNPP site were not able to visit Enerhodar in recent days. But they have received information about the situation regarding the evacuation in the town. It is part of a wider temporary evacuation in the region reportedly announced on Friday.
At the same time, he was told that operating staff are not being evacuated and that they are doing everything necessary to ensure nuclear safety and security at the plant, whose six reactors are all in shutdown mode.