RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine tried to attack Russian nuclear plant – Putin

Ukrainian forces have attempted to strike Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), President Vladimir Putin has said during a cabinet meeting.

Kiev sent thousands of troops into Russia’s Kursk Region earlier this month, attempting to reach the town of Kurchatov, where the nuclear facility is located. Moscow has declared the incursion an act of terrorism and has deployed additional troops to repel the invaders.

“Last night, the enemy attempted to strike the atomic power plant,” Putin said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday afternoon. “The International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] has been informed. They promised to come themselves and send specialists to assess the situation. I hope they actually do so.”

The IAEA already has observers working at the Zaporozhye NPP, Europe’s largest such facility. The mission was deployed in the summer of 2023, as Ukrainian troops attempted to seize the plant. Earlier this month, a Ukrainian drone attack set one of the cooling towers at the plant on fire.

Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev has discussed the situation at both power plants with IAEA director Rafael Grossi, and invited him to visit Kursk to personally assess the situation, according to the Russian media.

Grossi has accepted the invitation and is planning to visit Kursk next week, an IAEA spokesman told AFP. Afterwards, he will visit Kiev and speak with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.

According to Grossi, the IAEA is very concerned about any combat operations near the Kursk NPP, since it operates the same kind of reactors as the infamous Chernobyl NPP.

“They don’t have a protective dome around them, just the normal roof, which means that the reactor’s core is pretty exposed,” Grossi said. The presence of troops within artillery range “is a source of enormous concern to me and the agency,” he added, without specifying which forces he meant.

Moscow has repeatedly criticized the international agency for never identifying the perpetrator of the attacks on nuclear facilities, even though the IAEA staff has known perfectly well that Kiev is to blame.

Last week, Russian military journalist Marat Khairullin reported that Ukraine was preparing a “dirty bomb” for a false flag attack on either the Kursk or Zaporozhye NPP. Moscow said it was taking the report seriously and warned that any such attack would be met immediately with “tough military and military-technical countermeasures.”

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia and Ukraine report gains as some Ukrainians flee strategic city

Russia and Ukraine both reported new battlefield gains on Thursday, with Kyiv hailing the capture of another village on Russian soil but hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing the eastern city of Pokrovsk as Russian forces advance on it.

Visiting the border area from where his troops entered the Kursk region in western Russia on Aug. 6, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the seizure of a new village that he did not name, and said the incursion had helped reduce Russian shelling of the northeastern Sumy region.

Russian authorities said a Russian ferry sank after a Ukrainian attack that struck southern Russia's Port Kavkaz, which supplies fuel to the occupied peninsula of Crimea. Kyiv said it had mounted a drone strike on an air base in southern Russia and carried out a raid about 240 km (150 miles) from the site of its push into Kursk region.

After returning to Kyiv, Zelenskiy said the latest Ukrainian military action was part of an effort to put an end to the war on Ukraine's terms instead of Russia's.

"This is all our systematic defence path, the path to end this war on the terms of an independent Ukraine," he said in an address to veterans.

He said that to force Russian troops out of Ukrainian territory, the Ukrainian military should "create as many problems as possible" on Russian territory.

But although the incursion is an embarrassment for Russia, Moscow's forces have continued their gradual advances of the past few months against tired Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine worn down by 2-1/2 years of heavy fighting.

Moscow said its troops had taken control of the village of Mezhove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and that they had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in a different region to Kyiv's Aug. 6 incursion.

Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are now just 10 km (six miles) outside Pokrovsk, an important transport hub in eastern Ukraine, and this week started evacuating elderly residents and children.

"Everyone is in panic, people are running away," Liudmyla Sydorenko told Reuters on Thursday as she packed a 94-year-old relative's belongings into plastic bags at their apartment so that she could be evacuated.

"I went outside and was shocked: people with paper boxes there, mass evacuation. We don't want to leave, but we have to. We thought we could stay here. It's very difficult."

Moscow's capture of Pokrovsk, which lies at an intersection of roads and a railway line, would give Russia options to advance in new directions and also cut supply routes used by the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.

WARNING BY U.S. EMBASSY

Authorities in Kursk said they had begun installing concrete shelters to help protect civilians during the Ukrainian incursion.

President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of trying to strike Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant in an overnight attack and said Moscow had informed the U.N. nuclear safety watchdog about the situation.

But he provided no documentary evidence to back up his assertion and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the attack or reports from the battlefield.

Ukraine has closely guarded its main aims in the Kursk region but said it has carved out a buffer zone from an area that Russia has used to pound targets in Ukraine with cross-border strikes.

Military analysts say the incursion probably aims in part to divert Russian forces to ease pressure in the east, although there is no indication Russia has pulled troops from there.

The incursion has boosted morale among Ukrainians as they prepare to mark 33 years since independence from the Soviet Union on Saturday.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, however, said there was a heightened risk of Russian missile and drone attacks throughout Ukraine in the coming days connected to Independence Day.

RT/Reuters