The situation is “serious” but in the process of stabilization at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporijjia after the destruction of a dam, estimated the head of the IAEA, who went there on Thursday.
The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, visited the site of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporijjia on Thursday 15 June. His visit was notably intended to determine whether this installation had been endangered by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro, the great Ukrainian river, whose water was used to cool its six reactors. It came as kyiv continues to claim slight advances on the front. Franceinfo looks back on the highlights of the day.
“Serious” but stabilized situation in the Zaporizhia power plant
“We can observe on the one hand that the situation is serious, the consequences are there and they are real”, said Rafael Grossi, after spending three hours at the Zaporijjia power station, occupied since last year by the Russians. The director of the IAEA made this trip, postponed for a day, when the Ukrainian forces went on the offensive on the Russian positions in the south and east of Ukraine. “At the same time, measures are being taken to stabilize the situation“, he added, without specifying what these measures were.
Rafael Grossi estimated that the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, had “enough water”. “I was able to see the cooling basin (…) the irrigation gates, the canals which constitute the essential system for cooling” of the plant, he said again.
Slight Ukrainian “advances” on the front
The fighting continues after the offensive launched by the Ukrainian army. In the south, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar claimed Thursday a “gradual but sure progress” soldiers from kyiv, despite a “powerful resistance” Russian troops, who built defenses there for several months. “Ukrainian armed forces face total mining of fields”she underlined, also referring to “the use of explosive drones” And “intense shelling”.
According to Ganna Maliar, Ukrainian forces have advanced by “more than three kilometers” over the past ten days in the area of Bakhmout, a devastated eastern city that Moscow claimed to conquer in May. In total, the Ukrainian army took over “more than 100 square kilometers” in a week of fighting, said a senior staff official.
During the night, Russia also continued its strikes on Ukrainian urban centers. The hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky came under missile fire for the second time in three days.
Russia announces local elections in the occupied territories on September 10
The Russian electoral commission announced Thursday the organization of local elections on September 10 in the territories that Russia occupies in Ukraine and of which it claimed the annexation in September 2022. These polls aim, according to this body, to elect regional assemblies and municipal councils, even though fighting is raging there and Moscow only partially controls the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, Zaporijjia and Kherson in the south.