Russia wants IAEA to recognise Crimea's legal status
Russia has rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) stance towards Crimea and, specifically, Sevastopol in a draft of the Vienna-based organization's 2014 Annual Report.
Grigory Berdennikov, the Russian foreign ministry's ambassador-at-large, disputed an annex to the report during his speech at the latest session of the IAEA's Board of Governors on 8 June. Berdennikov's comments were published on the ministry's website the same day.
"The assertion in the annex to the draft of the report that Sevastopol was supposedly part of Ukraine during the reporting period of the report (2014) does not correspond to reality," he said. "It should also be noted that, after the release of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, including the city of Sevastopol, from Ukraine and its reunification with Russia, the IAEA Secretariat was officially informed that 'the corresponding facilities in Crimea are under Russian jurisdiction'," he added.
There is a very small IR-100 training reactor (200 kW) at the Naval Engineering school in the Sevastopol National University of Nuclear Energy and Industry in Crimea. This was taken over in the Russian annexation of Crimea, in April 2014, and Ukraine has raised with IAEA the safeguards implication. Russia's national radioactive waste management company, NO RAO, will receive data for the accounting and control of radioactive materials and waste from Crimea.
"We proposed that the [IAEA] guarantees these facilities according to our safeguards agreement," he told the board. "On that basis, the Russian Federation cannot agree with any of the provisions of the Annual Report, its annexes, or the report on implementation of safeguards, which contradict reality, and rejects them all. To Russia, these documents are legally and politically insignificant."
The IAEA has safeguards agreements in force with over 170 states from around the world.
Russia's objection concerns the list of nuclear facilities in the annex to the Annual Report. Although that list "does not express any opinion on the legal status of any country or territory or of its authorities or the limits of its borders", Berdennikov said, this "does not remove the need for us to state this reservation".
"We have listened to the comments of a series of delegations regarding our actions. It is evident that the positions reflected in these statements and our position, to put it mildly, disagree. We stand on the basis of reality and of international law, they live in a fantasy world. We ask only that the fact we hold a different position is reflected in the work of the Board of Governors. With regard to the distinguished representative of the USA in [their] rejection of our statement, I would like to respond in kind," he said.
The IAEA's 35-strong Board of Governors generally meets five times a year to examine and make recommendations to the agency's General Conference, held every September.
Typically issued in July each year, the IAEA Annual Report summarizes and highlights developments over the past year in major areas of its work. It includes a summary of major issues, activities, and achievements, and status tables and graphs related to safeguards, safety, and science and technology.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
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