ZURICH: Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Sunday that it had carried out the first staff rotation at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in three weeks, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said, adding the agency would send a mission there soon to assist in returning in to normality.

Russian forces occupied the defunct power station north of Kyiv soon after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 but Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company, Energoatom, said in early April they had left the plant and were heading towards the border with Belarus.

The IAEA on Sunday said Ukraine had provided the agency with more information about damage to the site’s analytical laboratories for radiation monitoring, saying the premises were “destroyed and the analytical instruments stolen, broken or otherwise disabled”.