The Kremlin said on Tuesday that no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, once again accusing Kyiv of shelling at the plant and risking a nuclear incident.
Ukraine denies those charges and has levelled the same accusations at Russia.
"Speaking about the security zone, one should only speak about those who are shelling this station. Who is a threat? The threat is those who are bombarding it," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia seized shortly after its Feb. 24 invasion, was again rocked by shelling at the weekend, leading to renewed calls from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to create a protection zone around it to prevent a nuclear disaster.
Peskov said Russia would keep talking to the IAEA.
The plant provided about a fifth of Ukraine's electricity before Russia's invasion, and has been forced to operate on back-up generators a number of times.
Repeated shelling of the plant has raised concern about the potential for a grave accident just 500 km (300 miles) from the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.
(Reporting by Reuters)
