KYIV | A counter-offensive was launched in southern Ukraine by Kyiv forces which reported occasional successes, while the Russian military claimed to have pushed them back and inflicted “heavy casualties”.
• Read also: Ukraine: an IAEA mission expected this week in Zaporizhia
At the same time, a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was expected to secure the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, the largest in Europe, occupied since the beginning of March by the Russians and at the center of all the tensions.
The Ukrainian counter-attack is essentially aimed at retaking Kherson, a city – of 280,000 inhabitants before the conflict – which fell into Russian hands at the start of the war, local officials announced.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces launched their offensive in several areas in the south. We ask the inhabitants of Kherson to follow the security instructions: stay close to the shelters and away from the Russian positions”, wrote on Telegram the head of the regional administration Yaroslav Yanuchevych.
“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 of the Kherson region”, located at the gates of Crimea annexed by Moscow in March 2014, has of his side announced on Ukrainian television Serguiy Khlan, a local MP.
He assured that the Ukrainian military had the “advantage” on the southern front after repeated strikes in recent weeks on bridges and a dam on the Dnieper, the great river that crosses this part of Ukraine, intended to disrupt the logistics of Russian troops.
The Ukrainian military group “Kakhovka” said it observed the retreat of a unit of pro-Russian separatist fighters from its positions in the region.
The offensive “failed”, according to Moscow
Russia for its part claimed to have repelled Ukrainian “offensive attempts” in the regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv, also in southern Ukraine.
“During the day (…), Ukrainian troops attempted an offensive in three directions, in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions”, declared the Russian Defense Ministry, adding that this “has failed miserably” and that the Ukrainians “suffered heavy losses”.
Spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army’s “Southern” command, Natalia Goumenyuk, had previously said that Kyiv forces were attacking “from many directions” on this front in order to push the Russians back to the left bank of the Dnieper.
All of this information was unverifiable from independent sources.
The Russian bombardments have also not ceased on the front line which extends from north to south.
The local authorities notably mentioned strikes in the regions of Kharkiv (north-east), Dnipropetrovsk (center), where they left one dead, and Mykolaiv, where they left two dead and 24 injured.
“It was shaking and everyone ran out,” Olga, a 40-year-old resident of Mykolaiv, told AFP after a missile and a rocket fell in her neighborhood.
“It happened in a second and, in a second, it was dark in the house,” testified one of his neighbors, Oleksandre Tchoula, 66, whose wife had just been killed.
In the Kherson region, a former Ukrainian MP who joined the Russian occupation forces, Alexei Kovalev, was shot dead in his home, according to Russian investigators.
“It’s not a war of the (Vladimir) Putin regime, it’s a war of Russia against Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hammered Monday on the sidelines of the Bled strategic forum in Slovenia.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has for his part made it known that he will once again welcome his counterparts from the allied countries to Germany on September 8 to organize Western support for Ukrainian military capabilities.
An IAEA mission in Ukraine
On the same day, the IAEA announced that it was sending a mission, led by its director general Rafael Grossi, to the Zaporijjia plant in southern Ukraine.
Expected Monday in Kyiv by the Ukrainian authorities, she must visit these facilities “later this week”.
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 for which the two belligerents held each other responsible.
In a statement on Monday, the G7 countries, “deeply concerned” by the risks of a nuclear accident in Zaporizhia, called for complete freedom of movement to be granted to international experts.
“Russia must ensure safe and unimpeded access” to the IAEA team, a US official said shortly after, for whom the “safest” option would be a “controlled” shutdown of the reactors.
Notably 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.
The Ukrainian operator Energoatom nevertheless claimed that the Russian soldiers “put pressure on the personnel of the plant to prevent them from revealing evidence of the occupier’s crimes”.
“Ukrainian sovereignty over this plant must not be disputed,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.
The town hall of Zaporijjia said since August 23 has been distributing iodine tablets to the population within a radius of 50 km around the plant, to be taken in the event of a radiation alert.
On Monday, the townspeople were preparing for the worst.
“You know, we experienced the Chernobyl accident, the threat was already very great, but we survived, thank God. Today, the threat is total, 100%,” commented Kateryna, a retiree.