The main fire at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine has been extinguished, Russia’s Tass state news agency reported early on Monday, citing Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom. Ukraine’s nuclear power company Energoatom said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that one of the cooling towers and other equipment was damaged. Tass also reported, citing Rosatom’s statement, that a cooling tower was damaged. Citing local Russian emergency ministry representatives, Tass said that it was a non-functioning tower.
Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of starting the fire. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of lighting the fire while Evgeny Balitsky, a Russian-installed official in the occupied south, accused Kyiv’s forces of causing it by shelling the nearby city of Enerhodar.
The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog, which has a presence at the vast six-reactor facility, said its experts had seen strong, dark smoke coming from the northern area of the plant in southern Ukraine after multiple explosions. It said there had been no reported impact on nuclear safety at the site. “Team was told by [the nuclear plant] of an alleged drone attack today on one of the cooling towers located at the site,” it wrote on X.
Zelenskiy published grainy video showing belching black smoke that appeared to be coming out of a cooling tower with a blaze burning at its foot and said radiation indicators were “normal”. He added: “But as long as Russian terrorists retain control over the nuclear plant, the situation is not and cannot be normal.”
Ukrainian sources have indicated that thousands of troops have been committed to its incursion into Russia’s Kursk province. A Ukrainian security official told the news agency Agence France-Presse that the aim of the incursion was to destabilise Russia and string out Russian forces with light, fast-moving attacks. It remains unclear how sustainable the operation will be in the medium term amid Kremlin threats that it will be snuffed out using Russian reserves.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday it had thwarted attacks by Ukrainian “mobile groups” in three villages north and east of Korenevo – Tolpino, Zhuravli, Obshchiy Kolodez – all 15 to 18 miles from the border, the farthest points at which Moscow has acknowledged the incursion to have reached. A pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel released a video of soldiers raising a flag over a building in the Russian village of Guevo, a couple of miles inside the border and seven miles south of Sudzha, one of the first towns reached during the incursion.
Commenting on the incursion in his nightly address on Sunday, Zelenskiy said that Russia had launched nearly 2,000 cross-border strikes from its western Kursk region at Ukraine’s Sumy region over the summer, which deserved a “fair” response. “Artillery, mortars, drones. We also record missile strikes, and each such strike deserves a fair response,” he said.
A Russian drone and missile barrage on Kyiv overnight into Sunday killed a 35-year-old man and his four-year-old son. Russia attacked Ukraine with four ballistic missiles and 57 Shahed drones, Ukraine’s air force said. Air defences shot down 53 of the drones.
Zelenskiy said the missile that killed the pair was North Korean. “Our experts have precisely identified the type of missile, and we know the exact area of Russian territory from which it was launched,” he said in his nightly address on Sunday.
In Russia, Kursk’s regional governor said that a Ukrainian missile shot down by Russian air defenses fell on a residential building, wounding 15 people. The Russian Defense Ministry said that 35 drones were shot down overnight over the Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod, Bryansk and Oryol regions.