Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to stay in Russian control, Moscow says

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was a Russian facility and transferring control of it to Ukraine or any other country was impossible.

The ministry also said that jointly operating the plant was not admissible as it would be impossible to properly ensure the physical and nuclear safety of the station.

It said Zaporizhzhia region, partly controlled by Russian forces, was one of four in Ukraine that had been annexed by Russia by virtue of referendums staged seven months after Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbour and a presidential decree had formally made the station Russian property.

Western nations have dismissed the referendums as shams.

"The return of the station to Russia's nuclear sector has been a fait accompli for quite some time," the ministry statement said. "Transferring the Zaporizhzhia plant to the control of Ukraine or another country is impossible."

Russian forces seized the station early in the invasion and each side has since routinely accused the other of staging attacks that endanger safety at the plant, Europe's largest with six reactors.

Although the plant now produces no electricity, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog has monitors stationed there, as it does at all Ukrainian nuclear power sites.

Ukraine demands the return of the station to its jurisdiction and rejects the 2022 annexation of its territory as illegal.

U.S. President Donald Trump, during a phone conversation this month with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested the United States could help run and possibly own Ukraine's nuclear power plants.

Zelenskiy said the plants belong to the Ukrainian people. He said he and Trump had discussed potential U.S. investment in the plant.

(Reporting by Maxim Rodionov and Ron Popeski; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Rod Nickel)