Kyiv blows up second bridge in Kursk as Putin hits back with missiles attack – live

The safety at Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is “deteriorating” after drone strikes near the facility, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

IAEA said its team visited the site, under Russian occupation since March 2022, and found that the damage at Europe’s largest nuclear facility seemed to have been caused by a drone carrying explosives.

While there are no reported human casualties near the plant or damage to equipment, military activity near the ZNPP has been “intense” in recent days, according to the agency’s report.

“Nuclear power plants are designed to be resilient against technical or human failures and external events including extreme ones, but they are not built to withstand a direct military attack, and neither are they supposed to, just as with any other energy facility in the world,” IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said.

Russian forces took control of the village of Svyrydonivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the TASS state news agency reported on Sunday, citing the defence ministry.

The village sits around 18 kilometres east of the city of Povrovsk, which Russia is desperately pushing to seize before its current wave of attacks in eastern Ukaine runs out of steam.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Kyiv’s allies to lift the remaining restrictions on using Western weapons to strike targets deeper in Russia, including in Kursk, saying his troops could deprive Moscow “of any ability to advance and cause destruction” if granted sufficient long-range capabilities.

He said on social media site X: “It is crucial that our partners remove barriers that hinder us from weakening Russian positions in the way this war demands.

“The bravery of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions from our partners.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry and pro-Kremlin bloggers have alleged US-made HIMARS launchers have been used to destroy bridges on the Seim. These claims could not be independently verified.

Russia has denied a report that Ukraine’s attack on the Kursk region had derailed indirect talks with Kyiv on halting strikes on energy and power targets, saying there had been no talks with Kyiv about civilian infrastructure facilities.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Qatar this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both warring sides

The Post said the agreement would have amounted to a partial ceasefire but that the talks were derailed due to Ukraine’s attack on Russian sovereign territory.

Ukraine has dismissed claims from Belarus of a military build-up at the border, stating the situation remains unchanged

Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian border service, told Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda: “As we can see, Lukashenko’s rhetoric does not change either, constantly escalating the situation with regularity to please the terrorist country.

“We are not seeing any increase in the number of equipment or personnel of Belarusian units near our border.”

Lukashenko did not say exactly how many troops Minsk deployed along the border. Belarus’ professional army has about 48,000 troops and around 12,000 state border troops, according to the 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance.

Suggestions that Ukrainian authorities supported by Poland were behind planning and executing the sabotage attack on Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 are groundless, the Polish president’s aide has said.

Germany’s former intelligence chief August Hanning told Die Welt this week he believed there were agreements between presidents of Poland and Ukraine to carry out the attack.

“These are completely groundless insinuations,” Mieszko Pawlak, head of the international policy bureau at the office of President Andrzej Duda said when asked about the allegations.

German media reported this week that German prosecutors had identified a Ukrainian diving instructor as a key suspect in the Nord Stream sabotage attack and issued a warrant to arrest him in Poland.

Poland received the warrant but the suspect has left the country as Germany failed to include his name in a database of wanted persons, Polish prosecutors told Reuters.

Ukraine has destroyed a key bridge in Russia’s Kursk region and struck a second one nearby, less than two weeks into its stunning cross-border incursion, disrupting Russian supply routes and possibly signaling that its troops are planning to dig in.

Russia’s pro-Kremlin military bloggers have acknowledged that the destruction of the first bridge, which spanned the Seim River near the town of Glushkovo, will impede deliveries of supplies to Russian forces repelling Ukraine’s incursion.

Ukraine’s air force chief, Lt. Mykola Oleshchuk, on Friday released a video of a Ukrainian airstrike that split the bridge in two.

Less than two days later, Ukrainian troops hit a second bridge in Russia, according to Oleshchuk and the Russian regional governor, Alexei Smirnov.

As of Sunday morning, there were no official reports on where exactly the second bridge attack took place. Russian Telegram channels claimed that a second bridge over the Seim, in the village of Zvannoe, had been struck.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said that Minsk had deployed nearly a third of its armed forces along the entire border, the Belta state news agency reported.

He did not say exactly how many troops were deployed. Belarus’ professional army has about 48,000 troops and around 12,000 state border troops, according to the 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance.

“Seeing their aggressive policy, we have introduced there and placed in certain points – in case of war, they would be defence – our military along the entire border,” Belta cited Lukashenko as saying in an interview with Russian state television.

Kyiv did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment. On Saturday Kyiv said it had seen no signs of a Belarusian troop buildup at the border.

Russian forces took control of the village of Svyrydonivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the TASS state news agency reported on Sunday, citing the defence ministry.

It comes as Russian forces carried out its third ballistic missile attack on Kyiv this month on Sunday.