Western officials say Russian Black Sea fleet is in defensive posture after setbacks, including Crimea attack

A serviceman with a Russian flag on his uniform stands guard near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on August 4. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency may be able to visit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in early September, according to Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative in Vienna where the IAEA is based.

Ulyanov said during an online briefing on Friday: “It’s too early to say anything about the details, these are all extremely sensitive issues, we are discussing and will continue to discuss the modalities of the mission, the route, the number of people who will be involved in this, how long they will stay at the station, for what tasks they are there sent."

"When the mission can take place -- forecasts do not always come true, but, according to my feelings, we can quite realistically talk about the first days of September, unless some extraneous factors that are not related to the goals arise again," Ulyanov said.

Ulyanov said that the organization of the mission is currently being discussed with the IAEA secretariat. 

"Almost every day I communicate with the director general of the agency, Rafael Grossi ... On Monday, he will appear here in Vienna, and work in this direction will intensify," Ulyanov said.

The Russian and Ukrainian sides are at odds over the arrangements for such a visit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday an IAEA mission would have to travel only through territory not occupied by Russia.

As for the status of the plant, Ulyanov said: "So far, there are no serious consequences, but, as the IAEA director general rightly said at an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council a week ago, at any moment this could end badly," Ulyanov said.

He said the situation at the plant was "extremely alarming. What the Ukrainian military is doing when shelling this nuclear facility is completely unacceptable," he said.

Ukraine has denied shelling the area, and blamed Russia for doing so as a provocation. Some facilities at the plant have been damaged.

Ulyanov said he did not think the IAEA would support Ukraine's insistence that a demilitarized zone around the plant be created.

 "I think IAEA won't support it, and for one simple reason -- the creation of demilitarized zones has nothing to do with the IAEA's mandate," he said.

Russian officials have rejected the idea of demilitarizing the plant, saying that it needs to be protected.

Amid a steady stream of accusations by each side, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday that Ukrainian recklessness was to blame for posing "a threat to the largest nuclear facility in Europe with potential risks for a huge territory, not only adjacent to this plant, but far beyond the Ukrainian borders."

"Our air defense systems in the region have been strengthened, we are taking all measures to ensure the safety of the station," Ryabkov said, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Ryabkov said that the presence of the Russian military guarding the nuclear plant was a guarantee that such a Chernobyl scenario would not be realized.

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Town near Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is under Russian rocket fire again, Ukrainian officials say

Russian forces in the occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the flow of ammunition, armor and fuel to front-line units, according to Ukrainian officials and Western analysts, thanks to a concerted Ukrainian campaign to cut off river and rail supply lines as well as target ammunition depots.

The Russians are moving command posts from the north of the Dnipro River to the south bank as bridges have been heavily damaged, Ukrainian officials say.

The first deputy head of Kherson regional council, Yuri Sobolevsky, claimed on his Telegram channel that a significant portion of the Russian military command had already left Kherson city. Ukrainian forces are about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) north of the city, towards Mykolaiv.

Much of Kherson region has been occupied since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As part of Kyiv's counteroffensive to try to retake lost territory in the south, Ukrainian forces are targeting critical bridges to disrupt supply routes in and around Kherson.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said Sunday that the Russians may be leaving for the other side of the river "to avoid being trapped in Kherson city if Ukrainian strikes cut off all ground lines of communication connecting the right bank of the Dnipro River to the Russian rear."

Videos have appeared on social media in the past few days showing renewed long-range artillery attacks on the Antonivskyi bridge and a road bridge over the dam near Nova Kakhovka, rendering them impassable for heavily armored vehicles. In some areas, the river is up to 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide, making pontoon bridges impractical.

The Ukrainians have also targeted several railway lines from the Russian-occupied Crimea Peninsula into the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. On Tuesday, a series of fierce explosions rocked the town of Dzankhoy on the main line towards Kherson. Recent video showed a substantial stock of military vehicles and ammunition at the site.

Two railway lines from Crimea were struck in the last 10 days. Last week, local residents reported several hours of explosions in the Henichesk district, a port area along the Sea of Azov, and the railway further west at Brylivka was also struck.

"Within the last week we have destroyed over 10 ammunition warehouses and military equipment clusters. These hits do not allow for the heavy equipment to be transferred by these bridges," said the Ukrainian military's Operational Command South.

None of this suggests an imminent Russian withdrawal from Kherson.

Olga Voitovych, Yulia Kesaieva and Mariya Knight contributed reporting.

Read the full report here.

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Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv under heavy attack, according to officials

A general view shows the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, situated in the Russian-controlled area of Enerhodar, seen from Nikopol in April 27, 2022. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Concerns have mounted after the British Ministry of Defense echoed accusations from the Ukrainian military that Russian forces are using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine to fire at military positions across the Dnieper River, but Western officials have downplayed the danger. 

Russian forces are probably operating in the regions adjacent to the power station and have used artillery units based in these areas to target Ukrainian territory on the western bank of the Dnipro river,” UK's Ministry of Defence (MOD) said in its latest update on the situation in Ukraine.
“Russian forces have probably used the wider facility area, in particular the adjacent city of Enerhodar, to rest their forces, utilizing the protected status of the nuclear power plant to reduce the risk to their equipment and personnel from overnight Ukrainian attacks.”

The MOD’s assessment echoes accusations made by the mayor of the Russian-occupied town of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, who said in late July that Russia was using the plant as a fortress. “They (Russian forces) know very well that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will not respond to these attacks, as they can damage the nuclear power plant,” Orlov told Ukrainian broadcaster Espreso TV.

A mixed picture: On Thursday, Western officials downplayed the likelihood of intense combat in and around the nuclear power plant. 

“Russia might use the site as a safe zone, from which to carry out defensive operations. Ukraine will consider very carefully how to avoid taking major risks around the site,” the officials said. 

“The area of the site itself of nuclear power plant is too small an area to be very significant in terms of an advance. It could always be surrounded or bypassed by Ukraine,” the officials added. “It's a consideration and something that people need to be careful in their planning around but is in no way going to prevent an advance.”

The MOD's concerns come after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the situation at the plant was “completely out of control.” 

Grossi said he was trying to put together a mission, with the support of the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, to visit the plant, but explained actually going was a “very complex thing,” because “it requires the understanding and the cooperation" of the Ukrainians and the Russians occupying it.

Some background: Russia seized the plant, which is the largest nuclear plant in Europe, in the early days of the war on March 5. A week later, on March 12, a team of officials and technicians from Russia's state nuclear agency, ROSATOM, arrived on site to help manage the plant and help with repairs, Ukraine's nuclear agency, Energoatom, said. 

The situation at the plant has remained complex ever since, with Ukrainian and Russian staff working alongside each other. Communications between the plant and the IAEA has been intermittent.

Military operations in the area, with an announced Ukrainian counter-offensive to take Kherson have made the situation even more volatile, the IAEA has said.

While Western officials understand some of the IAEA's concerns, they “don't think [the situation] is as dire as it is necessarily been painted in the media at the moment.”

The officials went on to explain that plants like the one in Zaporizhzhia are built with multiple safeguards in place. “So please don't think that we're looking at Chernobyl like situation, that's not the case,” officials said. “We think overall, the circumstances of that site are still okay.”

CNN reached out to Rosatom for comment but has yet to hear back. 

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Don’t delay graft complaints against govt. officials: Delhi L-G

Graft complaints against government officials must be investigated without delay, Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena said here on Tuesday while expressing displeasure over the time being taken to process such cases.

The L-G has taken a serious view of procedural lapses and delays by investigating agencies like the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) and the Directorate of Vigilance (DoV) in the course of investigation into complaints and cases of corruption against government officials, Raj Niwas said in a statement.

Calls for explanation

“He has called for an explanation by ACB officers concerned for all matters pending for more than one year and asked the department to furnish a list of all such cases citing reasons for pendency to his Secretariat,” it stated.

Mr. Saxena issued strict instructions to the DoV and all departments to “carefully consider” all cases and complaints referred to them for comments and examination and ensure that these are provided within a fixed timeframe “after judicious application of mind.”

While there were many cases of investigation pending since 2012-2017, the administrative departments were found to not have furnished their comments. In others, the DoV had submitted “self-contradictory recommendations” for grant of sanction.

“Advising the DoV to ensure that requests from the ACB are submitted for his consideration only after due diligence by the administrative departments against whose official the complaint has been made, the L-G has instructed that comments of the administrative department be put on record without fail,” Raj Niwas stated.

“It should be ensured that the recommendations made by the various agencies are to the farthest possible extent, not in variance of each other and are not self-contradictory which will ensure speedy disposal of cases on one hand and also ensure justice to the complainant as well as respondent,” it added.

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