A counter-offensive was launched in southern Ukraine by Kyiv forces which reported occasional successes, while the Russian army claimed to have inflicted “heavy casualties”.
At the same time, a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was expected to secure the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, occupied since the beginning of March by the Russians and at the center of all tensions.
The counter-attack in kyiv essentially aims to retake Kherson, a city of 280,000 inhabitants – before the conflict – which fell into Russian hands at the start of the war.
“Ukrainian armed forces launched their offensive in several areas in the south. We ask the residents of Kherson to follow the security instructions: stay close to shelters and away from Russian positions,” the head of the regional administration, Yaroslav Yanuchevych, wrote on Telegram.
“Today there were powerful artillery attacks on enemy positions […] throughout the territory of the occupied Kherson region. This is the announcement of what we have been waiting for since the spring: it is the beginning of the end of the occupation”, for his part announced on Ukrainian television Serguiï Khlan, a local deputy.
Russia for its part proclaimed to have repelled Ukrainian “offensive attempts” in the region, which would have “lamentably failed”.
All of this information was unverifiable from independent sources.
“Ukraine is taking back what is hers,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted in his daily evening message.
The same day, the IAEA announced that it was sending a mission led by its director general Rafael Grossi to the Zaporijjia plant.
Mr. Grossi had been asking for several months to be able to go there, warning of the “real risk of nuclear disaster” after a series of bombings of which the two belligerents accused each other.
In a statement on Monday, the G7 countries, “deeply concerned” by the risk of a nuclear accident in Zaporizhia, called for full freedom of movement to be granted to international experts.
“Russia must ensure safe and unimpeded access” to the IAEA team, a US official claimed shortly after, for whom the “safest” option would be a “controlled” shutdown of the reactors.
In particular accused by kyiv of having positioned artillery pieces on the site of the power plant to shell the positions of its army, Russia on the same day deemed this inspection “necessary”, through the voice of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.