Ukraine targeting Russians ‘shooting at, or from nuclear plant’

Kyiv: Ukraine is targeting Russian soldiers who shoot at an occupied nuclear plant in the south of the country or use it as a base to shoot from, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over multiple recent incidents of shelling at the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russian troops captured the station early in the war.

A Russian military convoy on the road toward the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia region, in territory under Russian military control, on May 1.Credit:AP

“Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army,” Zelensky said in an evening address on Saturday (Ukraine time).

Zelensky, who did not give any details, repeated accusations that Russia was using the plant as nuclear blackmail.

The G7 group of nations have called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from the power station.

Ukraine’s defence intelligence agency earlier warned of fresh Russian “provocations” around the plant. The agency said Russian troops had parking a Pion self-propelled howitzer outside the nearby town and put a Ukrainian flag on it.

The agency also said that Thursday’s strikes on the territory of the plant, which Ukraine says damaged water-pumping infrastructure and a fire station, had been conducted from the Russian-controlled village of Vodiane, about seven kilometres east of the plant.

Enerhodar mayor Dmytro Orlov, who evacuated to Kyiv-controlled territory in April, wrote on Telegram that local residents had informed him of fresh Russian shelling in the direction of the town’s industrial zone and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on Saturday. It was not clear if any shells hit the grounds of the plant.

Local Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were shelling the plant.

“According to witnesses, explosions can be heard again in the town,” Rogov said, adding that shells had landed in the vicinity of the power station, without specifying if it had hit the plant’s territory.

Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over multiple recent incidents of shelling at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, while the G7 group of nations have called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from the power station.

Valentyna Kondratieva, 75, points to her damaged home, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022, where she sustained injuries in a Russian rocket attack last night in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region.Credit:AP

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak accused Russia of “hitting the part of the nuclear power plant where the energy that powers the south of Ukraine is generated.”

“The goal is to disconnect us from the [plant] and blame the Ukrainian army for this,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly alleged that Russian forces were using the plant as a shield while firing at Ukrainian communities across the river, knowing that Ukrainian forces were unlikely to fire back for fear of triggering a nuclear accident.

They said Russian shelling on Friday night killed one woman and injured two other civilians in the city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine’s southern Mykolayiv region also said a woman died there in shelling.

Russia’s military pounded residential areas across Ukraine overnight, claiming gains, as Ukrainian forces pressed a counteroffensive to try to take back an occupied southern region, striking the last working bridge over a river in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday.

A Russian rocket attack on the city of Kramatorsk killed three people and wounded 13 others on Friday night, according to the mayor. Kramatorsk is the headquarters for Ukrainian forces in the country’s war-torn east.

The attack came less than a day after 11 other rockets were fired at the city, one of the two main Ukrainian-held ones in Donetsk province, the focus of an ongoing Russian offensive to capture eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed on Saturday its forces had taken control of Pisky, a village on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk, the provincial capital that pro-Moscow separatists have controlled since 2014.

Russian troops and the Kremlin-backed rebels are trying to seize Ukrainian-held areas north and west of the city of Donetsk to expand the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic. But the Ukrainian military said Saturday that its forces had prevented an overnight advance toward the smaller cities of Avdiivka and Bakhmut.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov also claimed that Russian strikes near Kramatorsk, 120 kilometres north of Donetsk city, destroyed a US-supplied multiple rocket launcher and ammunition. Ukrainian authorities did not acknowledge any military losses but said Russian missile strikes on Friday on Kramatorsk had destroyed 20 residential buildings.

Reuters, AP

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