The British Ministry of Defense said that the Russian army brought in new ground forces to support its military operation in Ukraine, and while Moscow and Kiev continued to exchange accusations of bombing near the Zaporozhye nuclear plant, the Group of Seven demanded that Russia withdraw from the station.

The British Ministry of Defense said, in its daily intelligence bulletin, that it believed that Russia "almost certainly" had created a new ground force to support its war, noting that the new forces belonged to the Third Army, whose command is in the city of Molino, near the capital, Moscow.

The ministry expressed its belief that Russia will seek to increase the number of forces it needs to continue its offensive in the Donbass, and strengthen its defenses against the counter-attacks of the Ukrainian army in the south of the country, but it ruled out that the new force would play a decisive role in the war.

Russian bombing

On the ground, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region (central Ukraine), Valentin Reznichenko, said today, Wednesday, that the Russian attack on Marjanets took place using 80 Grad missiles.

He added that more than 20 buildings were damaged in the town on the other side of the Dnipro River, close to the power plant.

And he added, "The same attack caused the destruction of a power line and left thousands of residents without electricity."

On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the destruction of a number of arms and ammunition depots in Ukraine, most notably a depot containing about 6,000 shells in Donetsk Province.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov also announced the killing of about 100 Ukrainian soldiers in the targeting of their positions in Kharkiv, and the destruction of an anti-aircraft armored vehicle that Ukraine obtained from Germany, according to the spokesman's description.

Crimean attack

For its part, the Ukrainian armed forces announced that the missile attack carried out by its forces on Tuesday on the Saki base in the Crimea resulted in the destruction of 9 Russian aircraft.

It explained that this attack is the beginning of its military operations there, stressing that it will continue to target Russian bases in the region.

But the Russian Defense Ministry denied the occurrence of a Ukrainian attack, and confirmed that munitions exploded in the area of ​​the Saki military airport, adjacent to the base;

It was the cause of these explosions without causing any damage to the facilities.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the inauguration of what he called the "Crimea platform" of a diplomatic nature to work on liberating the Crimea from Russian rule.

Zelensky considered the liberation of Crimea the final stage in the war between his country and Russia.

Zaporozhye station

In a related context, Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of endangering the safety of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, by exchanging attacks near it.

Ukraine said on Wednesday that Russia was using its location at the nuclear plant it seized at the start of the war to target a nearby town with missile attacks.

Marjanets, which Ukraine says has been targeted by Russia, is a town Moscow claims Ukrainian forces have used in the past to bomb Russian forces holed up at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which Russia seized in March.

In turn, the director of the Ukrainian company "Energoatom" said that Russian forces are preparing to connect the Zaporozhye nuclear plant to the Crimean power grid in southeastern Ukraine.

He explained that this work requires first destroying the power lines connected to the Ukrainian system, which is a matter of great danger, as he described it.

For its part, the Group of Seven major industrialized countries said that Russia's control of the Ukrainian nuclear facility Zaporozhye endangered the region.

Today, Wednesday, the group's foreign ministers demanded that Russia immediately return control of the station to Ukraine, something that Moscow is unlikely to do.

Russian moves

Al Jazeera has learned from diplomatic sources that Russia has requested an open meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday on what it describes as "the attacks of the Ukrainian armed forces on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and their potentially catastrophic consequences."

The sources said that Moscow calls for a briefing from the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, at the meeting.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the UN decision to prevent the International Atomic Energy Agency's visit to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant as irresponsible.

Zakharova added that this decision gave Kyiv the green light to bomb the facility, as she put it.

For his part, Dmitry Blolonsky, Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said that what he called reckless Ukrainian provocation against the Zaporozhye station endangers the security of all of Europe.