The Ukrainian power plant operator Enerhoatom has reported suspicious activity at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Russia starts nuclear tests and warns the USA beforehand. All reports on the Ukraine war here in the ticker.
8:05 a.m .: According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Russians’ “madness” is most evident in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut. That said Selenskyj on Wednesday evening. The city, which is in the Donetsk region and had a pre-war population of 70,000, has been the focus of Russian attacks for months. It is the only sector of the front where Russia is still on the offensive.
“This is where the madness of the Russian command is most evident,” said Zelenskyy in his evening speech from Kyiv. “Day after day, for months, they are driving people to their deaths there and concentrating artillery attacks at the highest level.” Zelenskyi adviser Oleksey Arestovych said that in just one morning Russian troops launched eight different attacks on the city, and each one been pushed back. This is reported by the British “BBC”. According to analysts, the city has little military value, rather it is symbolic. Because despite months of violent attacks, the Russians have not yet succeeded in taking the city.
Thursday, October 27, 07:45: Local media and regional officials reported that Russian forces attacked the Kyiv and Zaporizhia regions overnight. Kyiv Region Governor Oleksiy Kuleba did not reveal the location of the attack, but said rescue workers were on the scene. “The Russians are terrorizing the Kyiv region at night,” he wrote on Telegram.
The Kyiv city government issued an air raid alert around midnight on Wednesday, urging residents to seek shelter. Acting mayor of Zaporizhia Anatoly Kurtev reported that Russian forces had attacked the city and its environs, causing a fire.
5:41 p.m .: Around 1000 bodies have been dug up in the recently liberated areas of Ukraine around Kharkiv. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Reintegration, the bodies of civilians, including children, were exhumed in addition to the remains of military personnel.
2:59 p.m .: The Ukrainian armed forces are apparently not making good progress because of the bad weather. This is reported by “Ukrainska Pravda” and refers to statements by the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksiy Resnikov. “Now some weather conditions, I mean the rain, are slowing us down. But we are using the tactic of reclaiming our villages, meters and kilometers, step by step, and we will continue to do so,” says Resnikov.
He also stated that he did not expect street battles in Kherson as Russian troops could not retreat across the Dnipro Bridge, which Ukrainian soldiers would control. “We control all bridges over the Dnipro with American systems like the HIMARS, as well as other MLRS like the M270 and 155mm artillery. For them (the Russians, editor’s note) staying in Kherson is a real risk because they will not be able to leave the city like they did at the front in Kharkiv, Izyum and have done in other cities”.
12:11 p.m .: The Ukrainian military expects the “heaviest” fighting in the Kherson region. Russia is increasing its troops in the area, “the heaviest fighting will take place around Kherson,” said adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Oleksiy Arestovych. The Russian occupiers recently asked residents to leave the city. A sign that the battle for the city could continue to escalate. The Russian soldiers are being pushed back more and more by the Ukrainians – but the occupiers don’t want to give up the area just yet. Cherson has been under Russian occupation since the first days of the war. The city is the only regional capital that Russia was able to capture in eight months of war.
Wednesday, October 26, 9:08 a.m .: According to British intelligence services, Russian opponents of the war have repeatedly sabotaged the rail network in their own country in recent months. The damage to a railway line near a village not far from the Russian-Belarusian border earlier this week was the sixth act since June that a Russian anti-war group called Stop the Wagons has claimed responsibility for, the daily said on Wednesday Short report from the British Ministry of Defence. The actions are part of a larger trend towards increased attacks on the rail networks in Russia and Belarus.
The Russian army is extremely dependent on the more than 33,000 km of rail network in Russia to transport its units to Ukraine. Since many routes led isolated through sparsely populated areas, it was difficult to protect them against sabotage, the British said. The Russian leadership will be increasingly concerned that even a small group of citizens are so opposed to the war that they are resorting to physical sabotage.
10:30 p.m .: Russia starts its annual nuclear exercises on Wednesday. Russia informed the United States of this, the US site “CBS News” cites two US officials. The exercise is a “routine”. Western officials had previously warned against the tests amid increased Russian rhetoric about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
“It’s an extra challenge. Because we really need to be sure that what we’re seeing is actually an exercise and not something else,” Reuters news agency quoted an official as saying.
Russia’s “Grom” or “Thunder” nuclear exercise mostly involves large-scale maneuvers by strategic nuclear forces, including missile launches, according to a senior Security Council spokesman. “I suspect there is a very high probability of a nuclear test in the Arctic, probably to demonstrate their new technology,” British military expert Justin Crump told the BBC.
At a press conference in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assured that the alliance would monitor Russia’s annual nuclear exercises very closely, as it has done for decades.
7:07 p.m .: The Ukrainian power plant operator Enerhoatom has reported suspicious activity in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Assume that Russia is planning a terrorist attack there using nuclear material and radioactive waste, according to a statement from Enerhoatom. Russia has previously claimed that Ukraine is building a “dirty bomb” to frame an attack on Russia.
The Russian military has been carrying out unauthorized work on spent nuclear fuel storage tanks over the past week, Enerhoatom said. Neither Ukrainian technicians nor observers from the International Atomic Energy Agency were allowed into the area of the plant. There are 174 casks with nuclear fuel elements on the site.
“174 containers are stored at the site, each of them containing 24 bundles of spent nuclear fuel. The destruction of these containers by detonation will lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometers of the surrounding area.” Enerhoatom asked the IAEA to clarify what was happening at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Earlier on Twitter, William Alberque, a Berlin-based expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned that if there was a “dirty bomb,” there was a good chance the source of the radioactive material could be traced. Therefore, in the event of such an attack, Russia cannot blame Ukraine.
5:37 p.m .: Russia’s leadership says it wants to send more units to border regions near Ukraine and better equip the new recruits in the future. “In several regions, especially those close to the border like Belgorod, additional response measures are needed, which we are working out with both the regions and the government,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at a government meeting on Tuesday. Sobyanin was declared regional coordinator in the war by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin earlier this week. Putin’s second coordinator for the military operation, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, promised more money for equipment.
Eight months after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Moscow is increasingly complaining about the shelling of its own territory. Against this background, Sobyanin is now calling for security measures to be increased along the border. However, he did not name any concrete measures.
According to Prime Minister Mishustin, the cabinet has directed additional money to procure equipment for the soldiers. “We must ensure that our defenders do not feel a lack of equipment,” Mishustin said at the government session chaired by President Putin. Complaints have been mounting in recent weeks that many of the soldiers called up by Putin have had to obtain their own equipment because the army stocks had no or only insufficient equipment. The videos of rusty radios, worn backpacks and missing thermal underwear spread on social networks are considered increasingly problematic for the combat morale of the Russian troops.
3:34 p.m .: The Russian mercenary group Wagner is notorious – and could increasingly take over control in the Ukraine war. Because its founder, the businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is close to the Kremlin, is gaining more and more power in view of the disagreements in the Kremlin and the criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warfare. The US think tank Institute for the Study of War is now reporting that Prigozhin is currently building a military structure alongside the Russian armed forces that could threaten Putin’s rule.
Prior to this, Prigozhin, also known as “Putin’s cook”, is said to have recently complained to the President about the actions of the Russian military. The Washington Post reports, citing two US officials familiar with the matter.
Russian military bloggers reported that Prigozhin is therefore promoting the formation of a volunteer battalion. The recruits are recruited by former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Igor Girkin. Girkin is considered a Russian ultra-nationalist who, among other things, was involved in the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
The cooperation between the two could fuel a nationalist electorate, speculate Russian military bloggers. Previously, Girkin had hardly been able to set up a volunteer battalion because he lacked the resources. Prigozhin is supposed to deliver this to him now. According to the analysts of the ISW, hardliner Prigozhin himself hopes that this will give him more support from the population for his goal of “war to victory”.
Surf tip: Putin’s shadow army – mercenary group Wagner: What you should know about the killers
12:49 p.m .: According to a report by the “BBC”, Russian troops in occupied Mykolayiv willfully cut off the water supply. As military and UN experts reported to the British news channel, on April 12, Putin’s army destroyed the water pipes in the city – where the underground pipes emerge from the surface. Satellite images should also prove this.
“I believe the destruction was caused by the deliberate placement of an explosive charge directly under or on the pipe, in the most vulnerable spot,” military forensics expert Chris Cobb Smith told the BBC. 40 million liters of water ran out for eight hours before the supply was shut off. Since then, the residents no longer have clean drinking water and have to get their water from distribution points.
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