Multiple blasts have rocked Russia-annexed Crimea with a pro-Moscow official accusing Kiev of launching more than 10 drone strikes, while air raid sirens also blared across most of Ukraine for several hours at night.
The alleged drone strikes on Sunday came as the United Nations nuclear chief warned of “dangerous” conditions around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and the head of the paramilitary force Wagner Moscow called on Chechen fighters to send his troops to the front. have it paid off. line city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Officials and media said Russian air defense systems had repelled Ukrainian drone strikes and at least three of the unmanned aerial vehicles had been shot down over the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.
“No objects [in Sevastopol] were damaged,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, said on the Telegram messaging app.
There were no immediate details of any damage from the attacks elsewhere on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Baza, a Telegram channel with links to Russian law enforcement agencies, reported earlier on Sunday that there were no casualties in a series of attacks in Crimea.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the messages.
There was no immediate reaction from Kiev.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, airstrikes rang out for several hours in about two-thirds of the country overnight into Sunday morning, with officials saying air defense systems shot down a number of drones, including one over Kiev airspace.
“During the last air raid alert, an enemy reconnaissance UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] was detected in Kyiv airspace,” the Kyiv military administration said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The drone has been destroyed… For now, there are no casualties or destruction.”
The warnings extended from the capital Kyiv and the regions west of it to all regions in the east and south to the Kherson region.
Local officials in several Ukrainian regions reported that air defense systems were deployed overnight, but there was no immediate information early Sunday on possible casualties or damage.
‘Dangerous situation’ near Zaporizhia
The developments came as Ukraine prepared for a counter-offensive to take back territory in the east that Russia illegally annexed after its invasion last February.
Raids on Russian-held targets have intensified over the past two weeks, especially in Crimea, while Moscow – citing intensified Ukrainian shelling – has ordered the temporary evacuation of families with children and the elderly from the occupied town of Enerhodar, near the nuclear power plant from Zaporizhzhia. station.
Russian troops control about 80 percent of the Zaporizhia region.
The evacuations prompted Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to take measures to ensure the safe operation of the plant.
“The general situation in the area around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” Grossi said in a statement on the IAEA website. “I am deeply concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant.”
While nuclear plant personnel remain on site, IAEA experts “have received information that the announced evacuation of residents of the town of Enerhodar – where most of the plant’s personnel live – has begun and are closely monitoring the situation for possible implications for nuclear safety and security. Grossi added.
Wagner on appeal
Meanwhile, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, asked Moscow to hand over his position to the forces of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
“I ask you to issue a combat order before midnight on May 10 regarding the transfer of the positions of Wagner’s paramilitary units in Bakhmut and its periphery to the units of the Akhmat battalion,” Prigozhin said in a letter to the Minister of Defence. Sergey Shoigu.
The Akhmat Battalion refers to combat units commanded by strongman Kadyrov, who has ruled the Muslim-majority Russian republic of Chechnya for the past decade and a half.
Wagner fighters have led the battle for Bakhmut, the spearhead of the months-long Russian assault on the city, and nearly took it in what has been the longest and bloodiest battle of the Russian campaign in Ukraine.
But relations between Prigozhin and the Russian military, long strained, reached a boiling point this week.
In a series of scathing videos on Friday, Prigozhin Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov blamed “tens of thousands” of Russian fighters killed and wounded in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said his fighters would be forced to retreat due to a lack of ammunition, blaming the defense ministry.
Kadyrov said on Telegram on Friday that his troops were “ready to move” towards Bakhmut. “The soldiers are on alert, we are just waiting for orders,” he said.
The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, has dismissed Prigozhin’s claims of a withdrawal, saying Wagner mercenaries fortified positions in Bakhmut with the likely intent of trying to take the devastated city before Russia defeated the Soviets on May 9. Union in World War II marks.
“We are now seeing them pull [fighters] from the entire line of attack where the Wagner fighters were, they move [them] in the direction of Bakhmut,” Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Hanna Maliar said on Ukrainian television.