The safety of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia in question.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres discussed on Monday August 15 by telephone the security of this plant, under Moscow control in southern Ukraine, where it is targeted by bombing.

“Sergei Shoigu conducted telephone negotiations with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres regarding the conditions for safe operation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, was taken in early March by Russian troops, at the start of their large-scale offensive in Ukraine, launched on February 24.

Since the end of July, several strikes, of which the two parties accuse each other, have targeted the site, raising fears of a nuclear disaster and provoking a meeting of the UN Security Council last Thursday.

kyiv accuses Moscow of using the plant as an attack base and a depot for equipment.

Supported by its Western allies, Ukraine calls for the demilitarization of the area and the withdrawal of forces from Moscow.

A targeted Wagner base

In addition, Ukraine said on Monday that it had targeted in the east a base of the paramilitary group Wagner, whose men are accused of fighting alongside Russian troops, and destroyed a bridge near the occupied city of Melitopol (south). .

According to the governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the base of the private military company in the town of Propasna was "destroyed by a precision strike".

The shooting took place on Sunday, Serguiï Gaïdaï said on Telegram.

Very opaque, the Wagner group is reputed to be linked to the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigojine, himself considered close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The presence of its fighters has been confirmed in recent years in Syria, Libya, Mali and other African countries.

Bridges destroyed

Ukrainian authorities have also claimed that pro-kyiv saboteurs managed to blow up a railway bridge near the Russian military-occupied town of Melitopol in a new effort to disrupt the logistics of troops from Moscow.

"One less railway bridge to the southwest of Melitopol means a total absence of military trains from Crimea", a peninsula annexed in 2014 by Russia and essential to the supplies of the Russian army, announced on Telegram the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov.

Ukraine has targeted several bridges in recent weeks, mainly in the occupied region of Kherson (south), where kyiv says it is carrying out a counter-offensive that has made it possible to retake dozens of villages and now threaten Russian troops who have crossed the Dnieper river.

In the region of Odessa (south), on the Black Sea, three summer visitors were killed on Monday and two others injured while bathing on a beach in Zatoka, a popular seaside resort, by the detonation of a "machine unknown explosive," spokesman for the regional authorities, Sergey Bratchouk, announced on Telegram.

And in the morning, Russian bombardments on Kharkiv (northeast), the second city of the country, left one dead, said on Facebook a senior local police official, Serguiï Bolvinov.

The East under the bombs

In the Donetsk region (east), where the forces are currently concentrating their assault after having taken almost all of the neighboring region of Luhansk, "the situation remains tense" and "the front line is under bombs", indicated the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, in a video posted on his Telegram channel.

"Sloviansk was shelled overnight. And practically every day Bakhmut, Siversk and Soledar are shelled," he continued.

"Mariinka, Krangogorivka and Avdiivka are also constantly shelled. Almost three quarters of the population of the region has been evacuated. There is still a quarter of the population."

At the end of July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the evacuation of the Donetsk region was compulsory, particularly in anticipation of winter, the destruction of gas distribution networks risking depriving housing of heating.

With AFP

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