Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, but have ruled out that it caused a radioactive leak. The plant, the largest of its kind in Europe, is located in one of the regions of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia since the first months of the invasion of the country, in 2022, and has always been considered one of the critical points of the conflict due to the high risk of a nuclear accident.
According to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the fire, which this morning was completely extinguished, was started by the Russians, while Moscow blames a Ukrainian bombing. The United Nations nuclear agency monitors the situation regularly and confirmed that there are no problems at the moment, but requested that its team have “immediate access to the cooling tower to assess the damage”.
Meanwhile, Kiev troops have been carrying out an operation on Russian territory in the Kursk region for 6 days, which was recognized yesterday by Russia itself: in a statement, Moscow’s armed forces stated that they had stopped further advances at Tolpino, Juravli and Obshchi Kolodezthree cities located about 30 km from the border with the former Soviet republic, effectively admitting the incursion. The response was through bombing and the sending of contingents from other combat zones; but on the Ukrainian side it was made clear that among the objectives of the advance there is precisely that of “extending the enemy’s positions, inflicting maximum losses, destabilizing the situation in Russia, demonstrating that they are incapable of protecting their own borders”, with the use of thousands of soldiers.
This morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had 18 Ukrainian drones destroyed during the night, 11 of them over the Kursk region. The president too Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of the Ukrainian operation outside its borders, justifying it with the aim of “moving the war to the territory of the aggressor”. Moscow, for its part, evacuated 76 thousand inhabitants from the affected area, organizing emergency trains from Kursk to Moscow, and announced that there will be a “severe response”: the authorities proclaimed a state of emergency in the area and the beginning of an “anti-terrorist operation” there and in two other border regions.
Russia, on the other hand, announced the evacuation of residents from a district of the Belgorod region.on the border with Ukraine, while the incursion of Kiev forces into the neighboring Kursk region continues. “The morning promises to be alarming for us: there is enemy activity on the border of the Krasnoyaruzhsky district,” the governor of the Belgorod region said in a video posted on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov. “For the safety of life and health of our population, we are starting to evacuate” the inhabitants of this district, he added.