Nuclear plant fire may be bid to pressure Kyiv
Russian forces have reportedly started a fire on a nuclear power station in southern Ukraine to “blackmail” Kyiv as it pushes into Russian territory.
A Ukrainian official said there was “unofficial” information that Russia had set fire to a large number of car tyres on the cooling towers of the facility in Zaporizhzhia, which it occupied shortly after launching its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Footage circulated on social media shows plumes of black smoke pouring off one of the towers.
While radiation is said to be at normal levels, the fire may have been a warning to Kyiv as it advances into Russian territory after launching a cross-border invasion on August 6.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of attempted blackmail, and said it “must be held accountable” for the provocation.
“Since the first day of its seizure, Russia has been using the Zaporizhzhia [nuclear power plant] only to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world. We are waiting for the world to react, waiting for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to react,” he wrote on X.
The IAEA said yesterday that its experts “witnessed strong dark smoke coming from the ZNPP’s northern area following multiple explosions heard in the evening”.
The Russian-occupied facility’s management claimed a drone attack had taken place on one of the cooling towers.
The ZNPP said in a statement that it had contained the fire and that there was no threat of it spreading further.
It comes as Kyiv attempts to push further into the Kursk region after launching a surprise offensive earlier this month – the first foreign invasion of Russian soil since World War II.
Russia’s defence ministry indicated that Ukraine had penetrated at least 30km into its territory and claimed to have “foiled attempts” by groups using armoured vehicles to break through defensive lines near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez.
According to images analysed by the BBC, Russia is building new defensive trench lines in the region, a short distance from one of its own nuclear power stations.
Meanwhile, Russians who fled the cross-border attack by Ukraine have described abandoning their homes and running for their lives as local government control collapsed.
Panic spread quickly through villages in the Kursk region, in southern Russia. “We don’t understand why they don’t tell the truth,” one woman told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
“On TV, they kept saying, ‘This is an emergency’. What kind of emergency is it when there are foreign tanks on our land? This is already a real war.”
Ukrainian forces yesterday posted videos of themselves ripping down Russian flags above government buildings in villages around the small town of Sudzha, and mocking the Kremlin.
The head of Belovsk, a district that neighbours the occupied area, admitted that Ukrainian soldiers had now advanced into his administrative area.
The attack has captured an estimated 600 square kilometres of Russian land.
Tens of thousands of people have now fled the advance, pouring into Kursk city in cars, on bicycles and squashed into emergency buses, clutching a few bags of hastily-grabbed belongings.
In a video uploaded to Telegram, a group of mainly middle-aged women who had fled from Sudzha described their terror – and their anger at officials.
“Foreign soldiers armed with Nato equipment entered our land, and within a few hours our city was turned into ruins,” their spokesman said, ignoring a woman sobbing next to her. “We lost our land, our homes. We fled under fire, mainly without documents.”
Another man accused the Russian military of failing to protect the country. He said the evacuation had been chaotic, and that people had been forced to flee “in their underwear and T-shirts”, with children “wrapped in rags”.
“In one cut-off village, people had to swim across a river as best they could,” he said.
Despite an edict by the Kremlin to its propaganda units to play down the Ukrainian attack, people’s shock and bewilderment has leaked out across Russia’s usually pliant media.
People who had fled the fighting also told the Kommersant correspondent how their increasingly panicked phone calls to emergency hotlines went unanswered as the Ukrainian military advanced and their villages were destroyed.
They also said that they had been forced to leave old and disabled people behind in the rush to flee, despite a lack of food and running water in the town.
One woman said that she was ashamed of the Russian military, which she described as a “corrupt mess”.
The Ukrainian attack has also sent shockwaves beyond the Kursk region, deeper through the Russian system, with businessmen close to the Kremlin telling local media it has dealt “a very big blow” to the reputations of President Vladimir Putin and the Russian military.