ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine -- Experts from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency are poised to cross a front line in Russia's war in Ukraine to inspect the imperiled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, embarking on one of the most complicated missions in the agency's history.

The group of 14 experts with the International Atomic Energy Agency left the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early Wednesday morning in a convoy of armored SUVs and traveled south to a city near the plant, stopping for the night. The visit to the plant, planned for this morning will entail crossing a buffer zone of fields cratered with artillery shells between the two armies.

The agency's director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Wednesday that he hoped to spend "several days" at the site as independent nuclear scientists gauged the state of the plant, but local officials aligned with the Russian army suggested it would be a more abbreviated visit of one day. Grossi said the mission had secured safety guarantees from the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, but he noted, "We are going to a war zone."

Inspectors have to cross checkpoints along with civilian traffic, a Russian official said, and it was unclear how quickly Moscow's forces would allow them to pass into Russian-held territory.

In brief comments to reporters, Grossi said his team included "very experienced people, the best and the brightest," who would provide the world a first impartial view of the risks posed by combat to the station's six nuclear reactors and radioactive waste storage sites.

"We will have a pretty good idea of what is going on," he said. The visit, he said, "is a mission that seeks to prevent a nuclear accident."

The plant, which is controlled by Russian forces but operated by Ukrainian engineers, is in the middle of an active battlefield, and frequent shelling has raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe. On Wednesday afternoon, the inspectors reached the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, which lies about 76 miles to the north of the plant.

As the team traveled south from Kyiv, a Russian official said Moscow would support plans for the inspectors to set up a permanent presence at the facility. Mikhail Ulyanov, Moscow's envoy to the IAEA, wrote in a tweet that Russia "welcomes" the agency's objective, though he did not say when such a mission would begin.

The Russian-appointed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevhen Balytskyi, said earlier Wednesday that the visit was expected to last only one day, calling the delegation's stated goal for the visit vague.

"They have one day to inspect the operation of the plant," he said. "If they say some elements need to be attended to, we'll be able to do so."

Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Russian army's occupation administration in the area around the plant, said the inspectors would be made to wait in line with others trying to pass through checkpoints.

Ukraine has insisted that the inspectors start out from government-controlled territory, to avoid giving legitimacy to the Russian occupation, meaning inspectors must pass through front-line positions.

"They will not be provided with a special pass," Rogov said. "They had a chance to come from Russia through the liberated territory safely, quickly and without obstacles."

The inspection mission coincides with a Ukrainian push, primarily in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions farther to the southwest, to retake territory seized by Russian forces soon after they invaded Feb. 24. The Ukrainian military said it had struck Russian command posts and logistical sites Wednesday.

A British intelligence report said that Ukraine had "pushed the front line back some distance in places, exploiting relatively thinly held Russian defenses," while Russia's Defense Ministry said that its forces had repulsed Ukrainian attacks. Military analysts have questioned whether Ukraine has the resources to mount and sustain a major counteroffensive.

Both Russia, whose forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant on the Dnieper River shortly after invading, and Ukraine, whose military holds positions only a few miles away on the opposite bank, say they support the IAEA mission. But they have disagreed on how it should be carried out. Each country wanted the inspectors to approach through territory it controls, and Russian officials have ignored pleas to withdraw from the facility to create a demilitarized zone around it.

Ukrainian workers have continued operating the plant under harsh conditions.

In brief comments to reporters, Grossi did not address specific challenges but said his team included "very experienced people, the best and the brightest," who would provide the world the first impartial view of the risks posed by combat to the station's six nuclear reactors and radioactive waste storage sites.

"We will have a pretty good idea of what is going on," he said. Of the visit, he said, "it is a mission that seeks to prevent a nuclear accident."

But it was unclear how much time the inspectors would be able to spend at the plant. Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Russian army's occupation administration in the area, said Wednesday that the IAEA team would have to wait in line at front-line checkpoints.

"They will not be provided with a special pass," he said. "They had a chance to come from Russia through the liberated territory safely, quickly and without obstacles."

The Kremlin-appointed chief of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevhen Balytskyi, said the visit was expected to last only one day, calling the delegation's goal vague.

"They have one day to inspect the operation of the plant," he said, adding, "If they say some elements need to be attended to, we'll be able to do so."

Mikhail Ulyanov, Moscow's envoy to the IAEA, wrote in a tweet that Russia "welcomes" the agency's objective of setting up a permanent presence for international inspectors at the plant but that it remained unclear when such a mission would begin.

Russian troops seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in northern Ukraine, early in the war but later withdrew. While there, Ukrainians said, the Russians took heedless risks, including with their own safety, digging into soil that remains radioactive from the 1986 accident there.

Fighting in and around the Zaporizhzhia plant has sprayed one reactor containment vessel with shrapnel, penetrated a reactor building with a large-caliber bullet, blown out windows in an administrative building, ignited fires in a training facility, destroyed a fire station and left holes in the roof of a building from artillery strikes.

In what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy characterized as the closest call yet, fighting in August severed an electrical line, cutting off two active nuclear reactors from a source of power to run vital cooling pumps and control equipment. Emergency diesel generators supplied power until the line was repaired, but the incident raised what experts call the worst scenario of all: a cooling system failure that could lead one or more reactor cores to melt down.

Overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, as the IAEA team prepared to depart from Kyiv, artillery barrages struck the adjoining town that is home to plant employees and their families, Enerhodar, which means "the gift of energy," Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian officials said the Russian army had struck the town to unnerve the visiting nuclear scientists and "form a pool of local residents" who would confront the IAEA team about the combat damage when it arrived for the inspection. Across the Dnieper River, in the Ukrainian-controlled town of Nikopol, rocket artillery strikes overnight wounded one woman, authorities said.

Grossi said his agency, which oversees only nuclear safety, would make no assessment of the chaotic swirl of combat activity around the nuclear plant.

Ukrainian officials have accused the Russian army of ensconcing itself in the plant to forestall a Ukrainian counteroffensive, essentially threatening a nuclear disaster if the Ukrainian army tries to push past the site.

"They are Russians," Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's national security council, said in an interview Wednesday. "Nuclear terrorism for them is like for us, breakfast."

European Union countries agreed Wednesday to make it harder for Russian citizens to enter the 27-nation bloc, but they failed to find a consensus on imposing an outright tourist ban in response to Russia's war on Ukraine.

At talks in the Czech Republic, EU foreign ministers were desperate to put on a show of unity and further punish President Vladimir Putin for launching the war over six months ago. Still, they couldn't bridge differences over whether Russian citizens, some of them possibly opposed to the invasion, should also pay a price.

The plan now is to make it more time-consuming and costly for Russian citizens to obtain short-term visas to enter Europe's passport-free travel zone -- a 26-country area made up of most of the EU members plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland known as the Schengen area.

The move will be done by freezing a 2007 agreement to ease travel between Russia and Europe. The EU already tightened visa restrictions on Russian officials and businesspeople under the accord in May.

Speaking after chairing the meeting in the Czech capital Prague, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that an increasing number of Russians have been arriving in Europe since mid-July, some "for leisure and shopping as if no war is raging in Ukraine."

This, he said, "has become a security risk" for European countries bordering Russia.

Borrell said said he believed the additional delays will result in fewer visas being issued.

Students, journalists and those who fear for their safety in Russia would still be able to acquire visas. The move would have no immediate impact on the estimated 12 million visas already issued to Russian citizens, but EU officials will look into what could be done to freeze them.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described the move as "a half measure." He said that visas should only be issued to Russians on humanitarian grounds or to help those who clearly oppose Putin's war.

"The age of peace in Europe is over, and so is the age of half measures. Half measures is exactly what led to the large-scale invasion," he said after the meeting. "If I have to choose between half measure and no measure, I will prefer a no measure and continue a discussion until a strong solution is found."

Calls have mounted from Poland and the Baltic countries -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- but also Denmark for a broader ban on Russian tourists. The foreign ministers of Estonia and Latvia said that they may push ahead with further visa restrictions, citing national security concerns.

"We need to immediately ramp up the price to Putin's regime," Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu told reporters. "The loss of time is paid by the blood of Ukrainians."

Uniform rules are supposed to apply across the 26 countries that make up Europe's passport free travel area, but Reinsalu said that "it's our national competence, under the principle of national security, to decide the issues of entry to our soil."

Information for this article was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times and by Lorne Cook of The Associated Press.

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