- Kyiv, Moscow, trade blames successes at Zaporizhzhia plant
- UN Guterres: Any attack on a nuclear power plant is “suicide”
- Plant in Russian-controlled region operating normally – Moscow
- Two Ukrainian grain ships leave ports, 12 since last week
Aug 8 (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for international inspectors to have access to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over the bombing of the country’s largest nuclear complex. ‘Europe at the weekend.
“Any attack (on) a nuclear power plant is a suicidal thing,” Guterres told a news conference in Japan, where he attended the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony on Saturday to mark the 77th anniversary of the first atomic bombing of the world
Despite the bombing, the nuclear reactor complex was operating in “normal mode,” the Interfax news agency said Monday, citing Yevgeniy Balitsky, the head of the local administration stationed in Russia.
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Russian forces seized the plant in southeastern Ukraine in early March, shortly after Moscow invaded its neighbor on February 24, but it is still run by Ukrainian technicians.
Ukraine on Saturday blamed Russia for a new shelling in the area of the plant that damaged three radiation sensors and injured a worker. It was the second hit to the plant in as many days after damage to a power line.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a televised speech on Sunday, accused Russia of waging “nuclear terror” that warranted more international sanctions, this time against Moscow’s sprawling nuclear energy sector.
The Russian authority in the Zaporizhzhia region said Ukrainian forces hit the site with a multiple rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and a storage area.
The Russian Embassy in Washington detailed the damage, saying that Ukrainian artillery damaged two high-voltage power lines and a water pipe, but that critical infrastructure was not affected.
Reuters was unable to verify either side’s version of what happened.
Ukraine has said it plans to launch a major counter-offensive in the Russian-occupied south, apparently centered on the city of Kherson, west of Zaporizhzhia, and has already retaken dozens of villages.
Armed conflict near a Soviet-era nuclear power plant has alarmed the world.
Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needed access to the plant. “We fully support the IAEA in all its efforts in relation to creating the conditions for the stabilization of the plant,” he said.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on Saturday that the latest attack “underscores the very real risk of a nuclear disaster”.
OIL EXPORTS GAIN STEAM
Elsewhere, a deal to unblock Ukraine’s food exports and ease global shortages picked up pace as two grain ships left Ukrainian Black Sea ports on Monday, bringing the total to 12 that the first ship left a week ago. Read more
Four ships that left Ukraine on Sunday are expected to run aground near Istanbul on Monday evening, Turkey’s defense ministry said, and will be inspected on Tuesday, while the first ship to sail since Russia’s invasion on February 24 he docked.
The last two outgoing ships were carrying almost 59,000 tonnes of corn and soybeans and were bound for Italy and southeast Turkey after inspections. The four that left on Sunday were carrying almost 170,000 tons of corn and other food.
The July 22 grain export pact brokered by Turkey and the United Nations represents a rare diplomatic triumph in fighting unrest in Ukraine and aims to help ease rising global food prices arising from the war.
Before Moscow’s invasion, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for almost a third of world wheat exports. The disruption has since raised the specter of famine in parts of the world.
Ukraine expects to export 20 million tons of grain in silos and 40 million of its new crop to help rebuild its shattered economy, the country’s economic adviser, Oleh Ustenko, said in July.
FREAKING BATTLE FOR DONBAS
Russia says it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine to rid it of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities. Ukraine and the West describe Russia’s actions as an unprovoked imperial-style war to reassert control over a pro-Western neighbor lost when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
The conflict has displaced millions of people, killed thousands of civilians and left cities, towns and villages in ruins.
It has evolved into a war of attrition concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces are trying to gain full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea in the south in 2014.
“Ukrainian soldiers are firmly maintaining the defense, inflicting losses on the enemy and are ready for any changes in the operational situation,” Ukraine’s general staff said in an operational update on Monday.
Russian forces stepped up attacks north and northwest of the Russian-held city of Donetsk in Donbas on Sunday, the Ukrainian military said. He said the Russians hit Ukrainian positions near the heavily fortified settlements of Piski and Avdiivka, as well as shelling other places in Donetsk province.
Russia is also trying to consolidate its position in southern Ukraine, where it has been building up forces to prevent any counteroffensive near Kherson, Kyiv has said.
Interfax quoted a Russian-designated official in Kherson as saying on Monday that Ukraine had again bombed the Antonivskyi Bridge there, damaging construction equipment and delaying its reopening.
The bridge is one of only two crossing points for Russian forces in the territory they have occupied on the western bank of the main Dnipro river in the south.
It has been a key target of Ukraine in recent weeks, with Kyiv using US-supplied high-precision rockets to try to destroy it in possible preparation for a counter-attack.
In the northeast, one person was killed and another injured by a Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, regional governor Oleh Synehubov wrote on Telegram.
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Reuters bureau reports; Written by Stephen Coates and Mark Heinrich; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie
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