IAEA funded Russian nuclear research in occupied Crimea – RFE/RL

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) funded research by Russian scientists in Crimea after the peninsula's temporary occupation in 2014, despite officially recognizing Crimea as Ukrainian territory, according to an investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Critics argue that this funding is tantamount to legitimizing Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Journalists obtained several internal IAEA documents related to two scientific projects that received the agency's support.

The first project involved studying temporal pollution trends in Russian coastal areas of the Black Sea using nuclear and other analytical methods. Launched in the fall of 2016, the project was part of a broader study involving several countries besides Russia.

An agreement signed by the head of one of the IAEA's administrative sections briefly described the project: studying temporal trends of inorganic and organic pollution in specific Russian coastal areas of the Black Sea (marine stations on the Taman Peninsula, in Anapa, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, Sochi, and Sevastopol).

"This is a violation, of course, because the IAEA officially considers Sevastopol to be Ukrainian territory, as are the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and all the occupied territories of Ukraine," said Olga Kosharna, a former member of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine.

The project was executed by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow (the JINR director signed the agreement), with Marina Frontasyeva, a senior researcher at the Institute's Laboratory of Neutron Physics, as the lead scientist. The agreement stipulated that the project would run until September 2019, with the possibility of extension.

The financial aspects were not detailed in the agreement, but one clause mentioned that the IAEA was the project's sponsor.

Another document related to this project, obtained by Radio Free Europe, was a grant application submitted by JINR to the IAEA a few months before the agreement was signed in 2016. The application repeatedly mentioned plans to take samples in Sevastopol and listed relevant research, including joint work between JINR and the A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas of the Russian Academy of Sciences (established on the premises of the Sevastopol Biological Station).

This institute, before the Russian annexation of Crimea, belonged to the structure of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (under the same name). Its page is still accessible on the Ukrainian academy's website.

The application described the projected budget for the three-year project: €165,000, including €120,000 for equipment. The institute requested a €15,000 grant from the IAEA, with the remainder to be covered by its own funds.

Another Russian scientific project involving the IAEA focused on studying bird migration and the spread of avian influenza using isotope analysis. Radio Free Europe obtained two documents related to this project, signed in the spring of 2018 between the IAEA and the Russian executor, the Federal Center for Animal Health (FCAH), as well as a report submitted by the Russian scientific organization to the IAEA in September 2023.

According to the contract, the FCAH was to receive a total of €60,000 from the IAEA.

In response to a request from Radio Free Europe, the IAEA stated that the agency continues to consider Crimea part of Ukraine. An agency representative added that the IAEA-supported scientific projects involving JINR and the Federal Center for Animal Health was of a "purely technical nature" and did not reflect a change in the agency's position on the status of Crimea.

Additionally, Radio Free Europe discovered that a training session organized with IAEA funds is set to begin in Moscow this week, with several participants from temporarily occupied Donetsk attending after their candidacies were approved by the agency's secretariat. In internal IAEA documents, their country of residence is listed as the Russian Federation.

In September 2024, the IAEA General Conference adopted a resolution in which 65 countries demanded that Russia immediately leave the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The document reaffirms the decision of the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to send observation missions to high-voltage substations critical to the operation of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.