Zelensky accuses Russian forces of lighting fire at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had launched an incursion into Russian territory to “restore justice” and pressure Moscow’s forces, in his first acknowledgement of Kyiv’s surprise offensive into the western Kursk region.

Moscow’s forces on Sunday were in their sixth day of intense battle against Kyiv’s largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war, which left southwestern parts of Russia vulnerable before reinforcement started arriving.

Russian authorities rushed to evacuate residents and imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions on Saturday, after the attack which military analysts say caught the Kremlin off-guard. Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow, also sent more troops to its border with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of violating its air space.

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, vowing to respond in kind after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

“Today, I received several reports from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor’s territory,” he said late on Saturday.

“Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and is ensuring the exact kind of pressure that is needed – pressure on the aggressor.”

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday it had destroyed 14 Ukrainian drones and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles overnight over the Kursk region, and 18 drones over other Russian regions that Ukraine frequently attacks.

In a statement, it called the ground incursion “barbaric” and said it made no military sense.

Russian authorities are evacuating parts of the Belgorod region due to “activity” in the area by Ukrainian forces, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the southwestern Russia region that borders Ukraine said today.

Ukrainian forces have forced evacuations in the second region of Russia after the surprise Kursk attack.

Russian forces said they defended 11 drone strikes over the Kursk region.

Air defence units also destroyed five Ukraine-launched drones over the Belgorod region, the defence ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Belgorod region of Russia borders Ukraine and two over the Voronezh region, several hundred kilometres south of Moscow.

Exactly how serious President Zelensky is about his audacious counteroffensive into Russia isn’t entirely clear, and the same may be said for many of the details of the operation. However, a few salient facts are emerging from the fog of war.

The first is that it is a much more ambitious and well-resourced incursion into genuinely Russian sovereign territory than Ukraine has ever attempted before. Past raids into Russia itself have been chiefly for the purposes of mischief and propaganda. This time, the seizure of a surprising amount of Russian territory around Kursk – the advance is said to go 10km deep – is a much more significant move and goes way beyond its undoubted equal and opposite effects on Russian and Ukrainian morale, respectively.

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A Ukrainian security official has said the Kursk incursion was to destabilise Russia, with thousands of troops committed to the operation.

The security official, who was not named, told AFP that it is to stretch out the Russian forces across a wide area or along a front, making it harder for them to maintain a concentrated and strong defence, with light, fast-moving attacks.

The official said thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were involved in the attack after Russian officials suggested several hundred Ukrainian troops launched the attack.

“We are on the offensive. The aim is to stretch the positions of the enemy, to inflict maximum losses and to destabilise the situation in Russia as they are unable to protect their own border,” the security official said.

It comes as Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the attack directly and said Russia has launched nearly 2,000 cross-border strikes on Ukraine’s Sumy and it deserved a response.

“Artillery, mortars, drones. We also record missile strikes, and each such strike deserves a fair response,” he said in his nightly address.

The governor of Russia’s Kursk region held a meeting with the Russian deputy defence minister on Sunday after hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers advanced into the border territory, posing one of the biggest challenges to Putin’s forces since the war began.

Governor Alexey Smirnov met the deputy defence minister Andrey Bulyga, who promised additional forces and capabilities were headed towards Kursk and the army was doing everything necessary to ensure the safety of civilians, Tass reported.

“Yes, the situation continues to be challenging. But at the same time, the Russian Defence Ministry and all uniformed agencies are taking a full range of measures to stabilise the situation in the region,” Mr Smirnov said.

Russia has said more than 8,000 people have been evacuated from the border areas and more than 6,000 have been placed in temporary accommodation centres.

Russia has evacuated more than 76,000 people in the Kursk region as Ukrainian troops push further into its territory.

Vladimir Putin has been forced to call in reserve troops to aid what Moscow is calling a “counterterrorism operation”.

At the same time, a federal-level emergency was declared in Russia over the incursion.

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The UN nuclear watchdog’s director has strongly criticised the “reckless attacks” at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after explosions were heard and a fire broke out at the site.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said: “These reckless attacks endanger nuclear safety at the plant and increase the risk of a nuclear accident. They must stop now.”

The watchdog said the team was informed that an alleged drone attack on one of the plant’s cooling towers took place on Sunday.

However, there is no impact on nuclear safety, he said.

IAEA Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhya (ISAMZ) has requested immediate access to the cooling tower to assess the damage.

Russian forces lit a fire at the site of the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.

Radiation levels were normal, he said, although the blaze is visible from Ukrainian-held territory.

A local official in the Ukrainian city of Nikopol said that Russian forces were rumoured to have set fire to a large number of tyres in the cooling towers, Reuters reported. Russia claimed the fire was started by nearby shelling.

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President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Russia had launched nearly 2,000 cross-border strikes from its western Kursk region at Ukraine’s Sumy region over the summer, something he said had deserved a “fair” Ukrainian response.

“Artillery, mortars, drones. We also record missile strikes, and each such strike deserves a fair response,” the Ukrainian leader said in his nightly address to the nation amid a Ukrainian cross-border incursion into the Kursk region.