Ukrainian drone struck Russian nuclear waste facility, says Moscow

A Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk power plant in western Russia on Thursday, damaging its walls, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, calling on other governments to condemn Kyiv.

Ukraine must have known that its actions could have caused a full-scale nuclear catastrophe, the ministry’s statement said.

“We call on all governments to issue a strong condemnation of Kyiv’s barbaric actions, which are extremely dangerous and could lead to irreparable consequences,” said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Moscow said on Friday that it had thwarted the drone attack and two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste.

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Ms Zakharova said one explosive-packed drone had damaged the nuclear waste facility’s walls while another two had hit an administrative building complex.

“According to preliminary data, the drones used in the attack on the nuclear power plant used components supplied by western countries,” she said, adding that such an attack must have had the permission or possibly of Ukraine’s allies or possibly been ordered by them.

The Kursk plant said after the attack that there were no casualties and that radiation levels and operations were normal.

Ukraine generally declines to confirm or deny military operations inside Russian territory.

Thursday night’s incident came a day after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian drone attack in Ukraine’s western Khmelnitskyi region had probably targeted the area’s nuclear power station.

The UN nuclear watchdog said that attack destroyed “numerous windows” at the site but did not affect the Ukrainian plant’s operations or its connection to the electricity grid.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm either incident.

The latest developments in the conflict come as a third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta earlier this afternoon with representatives from more than 50 countries.

Moscow oddly denounced it as “a blatantly anti-Russian event”.

Speaking at the summit, Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said that Russia “will have to give in to the international community” and agree to Ukraine’s peace settlement demands.

Mr Yermak praised the participation of Qatar for earlier this month facilitating the return of four Ukrainian children who had been taken by Russia.

[ Ireland’s support for Ukraine is especially meaningful because of its moral authority ]

“Thousands more remain hostage to Russia, but this success shows that together we can do it,” Mr Yermak said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Kyiv has said about 20,000 children have been taken from Ukraine to Russia or Russian-held territory without the consent of family or guardians.

Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Mykola Tochytskyi, accused Russia of having a history of “provoking” and “stoking” hybrid conflicts across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Mr Tochytskyi, who is also at the summit in Malta, called on countries to unite and “build a new secure world order”.

“We warned that turning a blind eye to [Russian] violation of international peace and security would fuel conflicts in the world,” he wrote on X.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously expressed fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel could threaten military support for his country.

Mr Zelenskiy will detail a 10-point plan to end the war at the peace talks.

National security and policy advisers from more than 50 countries plus international institutions are expected – more than the roughly 40 at the Saudi summit in August.

“This meeting is a powerful signal that unity is preserved around Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said this week.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Malta talks have “nothing to do with the search for a peaceful resolution”.

Mr Zelenskiy’s peace plan calls for Russia to withdraw all its troops from within Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders, including from the territory of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Russia – which illegally claimed to annex the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in September 2022 – has rejected any settlement that would involve giving up land.

[ China wary of US agenda after Ukraine war erodes relationship with Europe ]

Participants include the US, the EU and Britain, as well as Turkey, which has offered itself as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia. Also attending are South Africa, Brazil and India – members of the Brics bloc that includes Russia.

China has been treading carefully about Russia’s war on Ukraine, and it’s unclear whether it will participate in the Malta summit.

The peace talks come as the Ukrainian air force said it shot down three out of the four Iskander cruise missiles that Russia launched overnight at Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in the southeast of the country.

The air force wrote said that the launches were carried out from the Dzhankoi district of Russian-occupied Crimea and that the remaining missile did not reach its target. Explosions were heard at about 1am on Saturday.

No casualties were reported, according to the Kyiv Independent.

On Friday, Russian diplomats dismissed as lies a White House allegation that Moscow’s military was executing its own soldiers if they refused to carry out battlefield orders in Ukraine.

“Whoever came up with these other-worldly lies could only have been a person with an imagination far into overdrive,” the Russian embassy in Washington said in comments carried by the RIA Novosti news agency.

“And all this simply to justify the failed, much publicised counteroffensive of its [Ukrainian] ward. Let us say with full responsibility that all insinuations about this in comments by the White House spokesperson are a lie.”

White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that the US government had information the Russian military had been executing soldiers who refuse orders.

“We also have information that Russian commanders are threatening to execute entire units if they seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire,” he said.

Mr Kirby provided no evidence for his assertions.

Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive, which has regained villages in the south and east, but is moving more slowly than an advance last year through occupied northeastern Ukraine.

Mr Zelenskiy said on Friday that Russian losses had grown significantly in the past week. These included, he said, at least a brigade worth of troops trying to advance on the eastern town of Avdiivka. – Guardian/Reuters