Russia foils new Crimea attack
Russia yesterday said it has shot down a drone over the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet in annexed Crimea, as President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow independent inspectors to travel to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
"The drone was shot down just above the fleet headquarters" in the city of Sevastopol, city governor Mikhail Razvojaev wrote on Telegram, blaming the attempt on Ukrainian forces.
No major damage or casualties were reported.
It was the second assault of its kind against the fleet headquarters in less than a month, after a drone attack on July 31 in its courtyard wounded five people and led to the cancellation of planned Fleet Day celebrations.
It was also the latest attack to target Russian military infrastructure in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Moscow seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Russian forces on Thursday shot down a drone near an air base in Sevastopol, just two days after explosions ripped through a military base and ammunition depot in Crimea.
According to French President Emmanuel Macron's office, Putin had "reconsidered" his demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency travel through Russia to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site.
The UN nuclear watchdog's chief, Rafael Grossi "welcomed recent statements indicating that both Ukraine and Russia supported the IAEA's aim to send a mission to" the plant.
Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres on Friday urged Moscow's forces occupying Zaporizhzhia not to disconnect the facility from the grid and potentially cut supplies to millions of Ukrainians.
A flare-up in fighting around the Russian-controlled nuclear power station -- with both sides blaming each other for attacks -- has raised the spectre of a disaster worse than in Chernobyl.
Yesterday, according to Ukrainian officials, a Russian missile hit a residential area of a southern Ukrainian town not far from the nuclear power station, wounding 12 civilians.
Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region, said on the Telegram messaging app that four children were among those wounded in an attack that damaged several private houses and a five-storied apartment building in Voznesensk.
The town is about 30 km (19 miles) from the Pivdennoukrainsk Nuclear Power Plant (PNPP), the second largest in Ukraine.
The developments came just a day after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres, meeting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, sounded the alarm over the fighting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the United Nations to secure the site.
Guterres visited Odessa as part of an effort to make more Ukrainian grain available to poor countries struggling with soaring food prices, after a landmark deal with Russia last month to allow its export.
The deal, the only significant agreement between Russia and Ukraine since Moscow invaded in February, has so far seen 25 boats carrying some 600,000 tonnes of agricultural products depart from three designated ports, Kyiv has said.
The grain deal has held, but brought little respite along the sprawling front lines after nearly six months of fighting between US-supplied Ukrainian forces and the Russian military.
The United States on Friday announced a new $775 million arms package, including more precision-guided missiles for Himars systems that enable Ukraine to strike Russian targets far behind the front lines.
The primary tool of Moscow's forces has been artillery barrages, and recent bombardments over the eastern Donetsk region -- which has been partially controlled by Russian proxies since 2014 -- left several dead.
The Ukrainian head of the region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on social media Friday that Russian strikes had killed five people and wounded 10 more in three settlements.
Strikes early Friday in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, left one person dead and damaged a school and a private business, the head of the region said.
Also yesterday, Konstantin Ivashchenko, appointed by pro-Russian forces as mayor of the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, was the target of an assassination attempt, according to Russian news agencies.
An explosion rocked his car as it drove past a zoo, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted a police source as saying.
Ivashchenko "was not injured," the source added.
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