AUGUST 20 (Portal) – Fresh explosions echoed on Russia’s annexed Crimea peninsula on Saturday and a Russian missile struck a residential area of a southern Ukrainian town near a nuclear power plant, injuring 12 civilians, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.
That attack on the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant (southern Ukraine) and renewed shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest such facility, have sparked new fears of a nuclear accident during the war, Ukrainian officials said.
In Crimea, a Ukrainian territory seized and annexed by Russia during a 2014 incursion into Ukraine, the Russian-appointed governor, who was not recognized by the West, said Saturday morning crashed a drone into a building near the Headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
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“A drone flew onto the roof. She flew low,” Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram. “She was shot down right over Fleet Headquarters. She fell on the roof and burned down. The attack failed.”
Razvozhayev issued a new statement on Telegram in the evening, saying the region’s anti-aircraft defense system was operational again and urging residents to stop filming and disseminating images of its functioning.
Ukrainian media reported explosions in nearby towns – including the resort towns of Yevpatoriya, Olenivka and Zaozyornoye.
Explosions and fires have ravaged Crimea over the past week, including a blast at a Russian airbase that appeared to destroy a large number of planes, according to satellite photos.
Ukrainian officials have not commented. Analysts said the attacks were made possible by new equipment from the Ukrainian army and predicted more would happen.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indirectly referred to the events in Crimea in his late night video address, saying the peninsula is looking forward to the 31st anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from Soviet rule next week.
“This year you can literally feel Crimea in the air, that the occupation there is temporary and Ukraine is coming back,” he said.
CHILDREN AMONG THE INJURED
After the strike near the power plant in southern Ukraine, Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the Mykolaiv region, told Telegram that four children were among the wounded. Private houses and a five-story apartment building were damaged in Voznesensk, 30 km (19 miles) from the plant, the second largest in Ukraine.
The Prosecutor General’s Office in the Mykolaiv region, updating an earlier figure, said 12 civilians were wounded.
State-owned Energoatom, which manages all four of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, described the attack on Voznesensk as “another act of Russian nuclear terrorism.”
“It is possible that this missile was aimed specifically at the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant, which the Russian military planned to recapture in early March,” Energoatom said in a statement.
Russia did not immediately respond to the accusation. Portal could not verify the situation in Voznesensk. No damage was reported at the plant in southern Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine exchanged fresh allegations of shelling around the Zaporizhia station, which has been held by Russia since March.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in the nearby town of Enerhodar, said Ukrainian forces had launched at least four attacks on the plant. Yevhen Yetushenko, mayor of Ukrainian-controlled Nikopol on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, said Russian forces had repeatedly shelled the city.
Talks have been going on for more than a week to arrange a visit to the facility by the UN’s atomic energy agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Ukrainian authorities have called on the United Nations and other international organizations to force Russian forces to evacuate the Zaporizhia plant. Continue reading
And in Mariupol, a city in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia after weeks of shelling, officials said new Russian-appointed mayor Konstantin Ivashchenko survived an assassination attempt.
“It didn’t work,” Petro Andryushchenko, an official of the ousted city council, said on Telegram. “But this is just the beginning.”
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Reporting by Natalia Zinets, editing by Ron Popeski, Diane Craft and Chris Reese
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