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It is a war of drones and a war of nerves in the European skies. The latest episode concerns the drone, this time Ukrainian, which hit the building of a nuclear power plant turbine at the disputed Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The impact caused a detonation, reports the CEO of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, Aleksei Likhachev, denouncing that Kiev’s forces carried out “the first deliberate attack” with drones on the plant.
The impact, which fortunately left no injuries or critical damage, nor affected the operation of the power plant or altered radiation levels, occurred while the clash was raging outside.
In the area, on several occasions during the day, there were Russian attacks which also left one person dead. Raid also in the Sumy area and in other areas of Ukraine which lead to a provisional toll of at least five people lost their lives and 40 others injured, according to what local Ukrainian authorities report.
Russia launched 290 drones, 279 of which were intercepted by Ukrainian air defense, the Ukrainian Air Force said. An escalation that has lasted for days and which brings international attention back to the Ukrainian conflict.
Reassured by the prospect of seeing negotiations for EU membership finally opened soon and by holding out on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is studying the next moves to get out of a war that has now become increasingly exhausting. The Ukrainian leader speaks of preparations “for important negotiations, for now without disclosing the details publicly”.
“We are in almost daily contact with the envoys of the President of the United States and with our European partners” to advance “diplomacy”, he specifies after having a special meeting to take stock of the situation. In these hours the climate between Moscow and NATO is not the best.
Yesterday’s incursion of a drone, identified by the Alliance as being of Russian origin, on a civil building in Romania triggered the alert and fueled the suspicion that Moscow is pretending to be distracted but actually wants to test NATO’s reaction. Today the Spanish Foreign Minister summoned the Russian ambassador to protest “against the incursion of a Russian drone into Romanian and European territory”.
These are not isolated incidents, warns Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk: «More and more Russian provocations. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that the peaceful sleep of EU citizens is over. Everyone in NATO should finally start taking these facts and these words seriously.” Even for the vice president of the European Commission, Raffaele Fitto, “what happened in Romania does not seem to me to be a small episode that we can dismiss, but it is an alarm bell that confirms how fundamental the strategy on Ukraine is”, is the message he launches from the energy festival in Lecce.
The situation remains tense while NATO circles discuss how to prevent new drones from reaching European territory, in a conflict where Ukraine is already the “steel hedgehog” of Europe, at the forefront in the manufacture and use of drones, so much so that soon an entire mission will be entirely directed from gaming stations, observed by reconnaissance drones in flight and broadcast live.
In the rest of Europe, however, drones often catch local authorities unprepared, as happened today at Munich airport, which was closed for an hour due to an alarm over a drone sighting which ultimately proved to be unfounded.