The long-awaited mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Zaporizhia is about to begin. The team of experts led by Rafael Grossi arrived on Wednesday August 31 in the city located 120 km from the nuclear power plant, a target for weeks of bombardments for which Moscow and kyiv reject responsibility. >> Follow live the latest information on the conflict in Ukraine On the ground, “fighting is currently taking place practically on the entire front line: in the south, in the Kharkiv region (north-east) and in Donbass (east ),” President Zelensky said Tuesday evening. Franceinfo looks back on the highlights of Wednesday August 31 on the war front in Ukraine. IAEA mission to start in Zaporizhia on Thursday Rafael Grossi and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team arrived in the city of Zaporizhia on Wednesday, the town which is 120 kilometers from the plant of the same name. “It’s a mission that seeks to avoid a nuclear accident,” the IAEA official said. “These operations are very complex: we are going to a war zone, we are going to occupied territory.” The mission of experts will have access Thursday to the plant occupied by the Russians, specified on the spot the director general of the organization, Rafaelo Grossi. “We are preparing for the real work which starts tomorrow,” he added. “We will try to establish a permanent presence of the agency from that moment,” he said, referring to a solution not mentioned until then, in particular by the Russians. Ukraine accuses Moscow of bombing Energodar, near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of bombing Energodar, where the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is located. “The situation with these provocations is dangerous,” Yevgen Yevtushenko, head of the administration of the neighboring town of Nikopol, said on Telegram on Wednesday. In Moscow, the Russian Ministry of Defense symmetrically accused the Ukrainian forces of “provocations” aimed at “disrupting the work of the IAEA mission”. He said that one of the Ukrainian artillery bombardments had “hit” Tuesday “a radioactive waste reprocessing building” of the complex. Gas deliveries via the Nord Stream gas pipeline suspended Europeans are once again on alert as deliveries via the Nord Stream gas pipeline were interrupted on Wednesday morning for maintenance work, scheduled until Saturday. Work “planned on a gas compressor station has begun”, announced the Russian group Gazprom in a press release published on its Telegram account. This interruption comes as energy is at the heart of a showdown between Moscow and Westerners who regularly accuse Russia of using gas “as a weapon”. “Fierce fighting” in the Donbass On the ground, “fighting is currently taking place practically on the entire front line: in the south, in the Kharkiv region (northeast) and in the Donbass (east)”, declared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian authorities notably reported four deaths in the Donetsk region (east), one of the two provinces of the Donbass basin. In this region, “fierce fighting continues in the direction of Bakhmout and Avdiivka”, where “the Russians tried unsuccessfully to advance” but had to “retreat”, they added. They also reported at least one death in Mykolaiv, in the south, where two dead and 24 injured had already been reported the day before. In this region, the Ukrainian army is continuing its counter-offensive, particularly around Kherson. The Russian Ministry of Defense for its part assured Wednesday that its forces had repelled the Ukrainian offensives over the past two days, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy with in particular “eight helicopters” and “63 tanks” destroyed, as well as “1 700 men killed. Suspension of an agreement on short-stay visas In the diplomatic arena, the foreign ministers of the EU states agreed on Wednesday to suspend a 2007 agreement with Russia facilitating the reciprocal issuance of visas for short trip. “The issue of European visa restrictions for Russian citizens must finally be settled. I think it is humiliating for Europe to be seen as just a big shop or a big restaurant. Europe is a territory of values above all, not of primitive consumption”, commented in his daily evening message President Volodymyr Zelensky.