Safety at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was deteriorating after a drone strike on Saturday, International Atomic Energy Agency monitors warned.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk appeared to wade into the controversy over the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, urging an end to speculation over who is responsible for the attack.
Germany would no longer grant new requests for aid to Ukraine as the government sought to rein in spending, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.
Safety at Russian-occupied nuclear plant worsens after drone strike
Safety at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was deteriorating after a drone strike on Saturday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors warned.
On Saturday, a drone exploded close to essential cooling water sprinkler ponds about 100m from the only remaining 750-kilovolt line providing a power supply to the plant, IAEA monitors said in a statement.
“Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” said IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi. “I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides.”
Military activity was once again intensifying near Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Russia seized the facility in March 2022, shortly after it launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour. Since then, the plant has been disconnected from the Ukrainian power grid.
Grossi had also held discussions with officials over fighting near an operational nuclear power plant within Russia and had offered to visit the facility, said the IAEA. Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion into the Kursk border region this month, taking over dozens of villages and towns in the first foreign military intervention in Russia since World War 2.
On Sunday, Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said the country’s forces struck another bridge in the Kursk area, as Kyiv sought to press its advantage. More than 1,700 people had been evacuated in the past day from areas bordering Ukraine in the Kursk region, the Tass news agency reported, citing Russia’s emergencies ministry.
Ukrainian forces also attacked a fuel depot in Russia’s Rostov region overnight in a joint operation by military intelligence and armed forces, according to a separate statement. Russian air defence repelled the drone attacks but falling debris caused a fire at a fuel depot at industrial warehouses, according to the governor of Rostov region. There were no casualties.
Even as Ukrainian troops continued their push into Kursk, Kremlin forces kept up their offensive along Ukraine’s eastern frontline. Kyiv’s troops were under the most pressure in the Donetsk region as Russia attempted to gain more ground near the cities of Pokrovsk, Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, according to a statement from Ukraine’s General Staff.
Over the past week, Russia attacked Ukraine with more than 40 missiles, 750 glide bombs and 200 explosive-laden drones, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram on Sunday.
Poland’s Tusk weighs in on controversy over Nord Stream sabotage
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk appeared to wade into the controversy over the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, urging an end to speculation over who is responsible for the attack.
The attack, which destroyed part of the natural-gas link between Russia and Germany, has drawn fresh scrutiny after German authorities confirmed this month an arrest warrant was issued for a Ukrainian citizen suspected of involvement. It risks an escalation of fresh tensions between Germany and Poland, where the suspect had been residing before he fled.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Zelensky had initially approved the operation before ordering a stop upon the Central Intelligence Agency’s request.
Separately, August Hanning, a former head of German foreign intelligence, told the Die Welt newspaper this week that the attack must have been carried out with the support of Poland and with approval from the highest levels in Ukraine and Poland.
Tusk didn’t directly address allegations of Polish involvement, saying only that “initiators and patrons” of Nord Stream should apologise and “keep quiet”.
Poland’s digital minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, rejected Hanning’s accusations, saying in an interview with Polsat broadcaster on Friday that “Poland did not take part in anything”.
The undersea link to Germany via the Baltic Sea was the main route for Russian gas flows before the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The explosions damaged both channels of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline as well as one of two for Nord Stream 2 in the waters near the island of Bornholm in eastern Denmark. The blast demonstrated the vulnerability of seabed infrastructure and prompted an increased military presence in the Baltic Sea.
Germany to reject new aid requests for Ukraine on spending cuts
Germany would no longer grant new requests for aid to Ukraine as the government sought to rein in spending, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.
Although existing programmes would generally continue, additional applications for military support would not be approved, the newspaper reported on Saturday, citing government documents and emails as well as unidentified officials.
The move follows a request from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with Finance Minister Christian Lindner informing the defence ministry in a 5 August letter, according to the newspaper.
Germany’s ruling coalition has been mired in bickering for months after a court ruling overturned billions of euros in funding, forcing budget cuts across the government. The three parties on Friday sealed a final agreement on next year’s spending plan, only after weeks of squabbling over limited funds.
Lindner, head of the fiscally hawkish Free Democrats, has insisted on restoring the constitutional borrowing limit — known as the debt brake — which was suspended to help deal with the pandemic and the energy crises. With German economic growth sputtering, that’s meant less money to spend.
In his letter to the defence ministry, Lindner downplayed the impact of the move, suggesting that funds could be made available to Kyiv from frozen Russian central bank assets. Still, it’s unclear how those resources could be tapped amid ongoing legal issues, the FAZ reported.
Under current plans, Germany’s military support for Ukraine — second only to the US, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy — was set to be almost halved next year and then reduced to less than a tenth of the current amount in 2027, the newspaper reported.
Kremlin is treating Ukraine’s incursion like a natural disaster
With a foreign army fighting on Russian soil for the first time in 80 years, President Vladimir Putin gathered top officials on Friday at his regular security council meeting for a report by Defence Minister Andrey Belousov.
The main topic wasn’t Ukraine’s shock seizure of territory in Russia’s Kursk border region. Putin said they’d discuss “new technical solutions adopted during the special military operation”, Russia’s euphemism for its war in Ukraine, in a brief televised excerpt.
The Kremlin’s attempt to convey a sense of normality over the Ukrainian incursion is being replicated in state media. They have focused reporting mostly on efforts to bring humanitarian aid to the nearly 200,000 people who’ve fled their homes, as if they’re victims of flooding or some other natural disaster rather than the first foreign military intervention since World War 2.
“The Kremlin doesn’t want to send a message that the enemy is at the gate,” said Olga Oliker, Director for Europe & Central Asia at the International Crisis Group in Brussels. “They don’t want to send a message of Ukraine’s strength and their own weakness.”
Ukraine said it was continuing to expand operations in Kursk and controls dozens of villages and towns with the incursion in its second week. Russia’s Defence Ministry has rushed reinforcements to try to restore control, so far without success. Authorities have also declared a state of emergency in the neighbouring Belgorod region, where officials report mounting cross-border attacks from Ukraine.
The Kremlin appears reluctant even to admit an invasion took place, saying Putin discussed “current issues” with top officials on what he called “the situation” on the border at a meeting on Monday.
Even as state television plays down the crisis, concern is growing among Russians. A 9-11 August survey of 1,500 people in 53 regions by the FOM polling company found that 45% considered that their family and friends were in an anxious mood, a jump of 12 percentage points since July and the highest level in nearly a year.
The proportion of Russians who said they were unhappy with the country’s leadership spiked by seven percentage points in the past two weeks to 25%, with more than half of FOM’s respondents rating the Kursk incursion as the top news event.
While alarm is growing, apathy remains the dominant public response, according to Mikhail Vinogradov, the head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation. “Anxiety dominates, not the desire for revenge,” he said.
Putin wants to keep stress levels to a minimum among Russians, who’re already unhappy about the failure to achieve the president’s goals in Ukraine, according to Sergei Markov, a political consultant close to the Kremlin. “But the authorities have a Plan B and if society demands everything is done to achieve victory then we’ll carry out a mobilisation,” he said.
The defence ministry in Moscow said on Friday its troops were continuing attempts to repel Ukrainian forces in a statement that claimed to have destroyed hundreds of armoured combat vehicles including dozens of tanks since the 6 August incursion began.
While the claims couldn’t be independently verified, they inadvertently presented an image of a major intervention that Russia’s security and defence establishment failed to anticipate and prevent.
Ukraine says it’s taken many Russian troops prisoner in the operation including 102 on Wednesday, the largest single group of Moscow’s soldiers to surrender since the beginning of the war. After months on the back foot in fighting in eastern Ukraine, the assault in Kursk has boosted morale among Kyiv’s forces even as Russia continues to make gains in the Donetsk region.
For the Kremlin, the risk is that the more people flee their homes and the longer Ukrainian troops remain on Russian territory, the weaker Putin may start to look as the guarantor of the nation’s security.
Novatek set to dock second LNG unit at sanctioned Arctic plant
Russian gas producer Novatek seems to be pushing ahead with an expansion project at its Arctic LNG 2 plant despite Western energy sanctions.
A small fleet of tug vessels towing a second production train approached the site of the plant on Saturday, according to ship-tracking data. The platform left the construction site near Murmansk on 25 July, taking a three-week journey across the eastern Arctic to arrive at the production area, where the first train was already operating, the ship-tracking data showed.
Arctic LNG 2 is a key pillar of Russia’s strategy to expand in liquefied natural gas, a growing global market that could help Moscow offset lower piped-gas flows following its invasion of Ukraine. The US slapped sanctions on the facility last year, aiming to cut the energy revenues fueling the Kremlin’s war machine.
The restrictions prevented delivery of the ice-class tankers needed to export the LNG, delaying shipments by months. But satellite images show two vessels recently left the plant, suggesting Russia has managed to circumvent the curbs using a shadow fleet. DM