Fears rose on Friday of the risk of a disaster at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine as intelligence chiefs said Russia was gradually reducing the number of personnel running it.
Kyiv accused Russia this month of planning a “terrorist” attack at the nuclear plant involving the release of radiation. Moscow denied the accusation.
“According to the latest data, the occupation contingent is gradually leaving the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence (GUR) said on the Telegram messaging app.
Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other in the past of shelling the vast complex at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest.
GUR said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.
It said Ukrainian employees who have signed a contract with Rosatom had also been advised to depart.
Employees were being told that they should leave by July 5, it said, and preferably head for the Crimea peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
GUR said the number of military patrols was also gradually decreasing on the plant’s vast territory and in the nearby city of Enerhodar, and personnel remaining at the plant had been told to blame Ukraine “in case of any emergency situations”.
Ukraine conducted nuclear disaster response drills on Thursday in the vicinity of the plant.
Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, suffered the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military chiefs claimed on Friday to have seized the “strategic initiative” in battles around the eastern town of Bakhmut.
They said they had recaptured around a mile of territory towards Klishchiivka (four miles southwest of Bakhmut) and to have advanced a similar stretch in the direction of Kurdyumivka (eight miles southwest of the town in the eastern Donetsk province.
The governor of the southern Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said two people were killed in the city of Kherson in a Russian strike that hit residences, a medical facility and a school where residents were lined up to receive humanitarian aid.
Russia’s military top brass were seeking to regroup after being rocked by the failed Wagner Group revolt last weekend.
The withdrawal of Wagner troops from Ukraine, despite them having delivered Putin’s limited but most high-profile success in seizing Bakhmut, was not expected to make a significant difference on the frontline.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said his country would receive $1.5 billion (£1.2 billion) from the World Bank to support reconstruction and recovery.
The funds will be provided with guarantees from the Japanese government and channelled to support social security and economic development.
