Ukraine counteroffensive latest: Drone strike hits town near nuclear plant as Putin cancels flights over Moscow

Moscow’s Vnukovo airport resumed operations from 7.28 a.m. local time (04.28 GMT) after restrictions linked to attempted drone attack, state news agency TASS reported on Friday citing the airport.

Russia is resorting to multiple defences to protect the Kerch Strait owing to its heavy dependence on the Crimean bridge which aids its military supplies, the British Ministry of Defence said today.

Moscow is “employing a range of passive defences such as smoke generators and underwater barriers, alongside active defence measures such as air defence systems, to strengthen the survivability of water crossings and minimise damage from future attacks,” it said.

The Kerch Strait is a bottleneck for military logistics support to Russian forces in occupied areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts and Russia is heavily reliant on the Crimean bridge and ferries to cross the Straits, the MoD noted.

“The bridge’s importance for both logistics and symbolism of Russian occupation mandates these extensive protection measures,” it said in an update.

“As of 29 August 2023, imagery confirms Russia has created an underwater barrier of submerged ships and containment booms to deter against Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV) attacks against the Crimean Bridge. At the southern part of the bridge, this includes several vessels 160 metres apart. These are located at the same place as the Ukrainian “Sea Baby” USV attacks on 17 July 2023,” the latest intelligence update read.

In September last year, the Russian Navy briefly trialled radar decoys on barges for several days, likely to deter radar seeking missiles, the UK MoD said.

“Other countermeasures to protect the bridge include the use of TDA-3 truck-mounted smoke generators, with an exercise conducted on 24 May 2023. This smoke was activated to deter incoming air threats on 12 August 2023,” it added.

A Ukrainian drone attacked the Russian town of Kurchatov, home to a nuclear power plant in the Kursk region, early this morning, governor Roman Starovoit said.

Emergency services were assessing the damage suffered by an administrative building and a residential one in the attack, he said on his official Telegram channel.

The regional official did not mention any potential damage to the Kursk nuclear power plant or give details of the targeted buildings.

The Soviet-era Kursk nuclear power station has the same graphite-moderated reactors as the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

An explosion and fire at the Chernobyl plant in 1986, in then Soviet Ukraine, was the world’s worst nuclear accident, spreading radiation across Europe.

Currently three RBMK-1000 reactors in Kursk are operational with one shut down, according to Russia’s state nuclear corporation.

Russian air defences shot down a drone that was approaching the city this morning, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

“Today, air defence forces near Lyubertsy thwarted another attempt to fly a drone to Moscow. There were no preliminary casualties or damage. Emergency services are working at the scene of the incident,” he said.

The drone was downed near Lyubertsy, southeast of the Russian capital, he said.

The Ukrainian ministry of defence has shot back at the growing criticism of Ukraine’s counteroffensive amid several reports that officials in the US are not pleased with the gains in the slow-moving warfare.

“It seems like everyone is now an expert of Ukrainian warfare. While we appreciate all the attention, we’d like to humbly remind you that if we listened to what non-Ukrainians said in February 2022, we would no longer exist,” the ministry of defence said in a minute-long video shared on social media.

Thanks all the same but we need ammunition, not advice, it added.

President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to boast about the Pskov attack twice a day after Moscow reported attempted Ukrainian drone strikes in six Russian regions.

One of the strikes caused a huge fire at a military air base in Pskov in northern Russia, damaging several giant military transport planes on the tarmac.

“The results of our weaponry – new Ukrainian weaponry – 700km away,” he said in his nightly video address. “And the task is to do more.”

Ukraine’s Western allies generally forbid Kyiv from using weapons they supply to attack Russian territory, but say Ukraine has a right to attacks military targets with its own weapons.

After months of fighting their way through heavy minefields, Ukraine’s forces have finally reached the main Russian defensive lines in recent days, south of the village of Robotyne, which they captured last week in the Western Zaporizhzhia region.

They are now advancing between the nearby villages of Novopokropivka and Verbove, looking for a way around the anti-tank ditches and rows of concrete pyramids known as dragon’s teeth that form Russia’s main fortifications visible from space.

A breakthrough would provide the first test of Russia’s deeper defences, which Ukraine hopes will be more vulnerable and less heavily mined than areas its troops have traversed so far.

A Ukrainian commander in the area told Reuters last week that his men had breached the most difficult line, reaching less heavily defended areas, and now expected to advance more quickly. Kyiv rarely gives details of its offensive operations.

In a statement yesterday, deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar reported unspecified successes near Novopokropivka, without giving details.

She also said Ukrainian forces were advancing near Bakhmut, in the east, the only city Russia captured in its own offensive earlier this year. Heavy battles were engulfing villages south of the city, she said.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, reported a “positive dynamic” near Bakhmut.

A Ukrainian MP has urged newly appointed defence secretary Grant Shapps to “personally come to Ukraine” to establish good relations.

Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun considered Mr Wallace a “friend” of Ukraine and expressed her gratitude for his time as defence secretary after four years.

“Ben Wallace is a friend to Ukraine and we very much appreciate everything that he has done,” she said from Kyiv. She has urged Mr Shapps to visit Ukraine to gain a “better understanding” of the situation.

It comes after Mr Wallace formally resigned from his position yesterday, prompting a mini-reshuffle.

Ukraine has asked critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to “shut up”, serving the sharpest rebuke yet of Kyiv’s frustration at leaks from Western officials who say its forces are advancing too slowly.

“Criticising the slow pace of (the) counteroffensive equals … spitting into the face of (the) Ukrainian soldier who sacrifices his life every day, moving forward and liberating one kilometre of Ukrainian soil after another,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters yesterday.

“I would recommend all critics to shut up, come to Ukraine and try to liberate one square centimetre by themselves,” he said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Spain.

Several US and other Western officials have suggested that the grinding war’s counteroffensive stage was falling short of expectations but did not choose to be quoted on their claims. Some of the officials have pointed holes in Ukraine’s strategy and blamed it for concentrating its forces in the wrong places.

In its pushback against more than a year old Russian invasion, Ukrainian forces have recaptured more than a dozen villages and has managed to penetrate Russia’s first line of defence.

The counteroffensive has been backed by billions of dollars worth Western military equipment as nation’s rallied against Moscow’s unjust war on Ukraine.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday his country has developed a weapon that hit a target 700 kilometres (400 miles) away, in an apparent reference to the previous day’s strike on an airport in western Russia.

Zelensky said on his Telegram channel the weapon was produced by Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries but gave no other details.

On Wednesday, a four-hour wave of drones that Moscow blamed on Ukraine hit an airport near Russia’s border with Estonia and Latvia, damaging four Il-76 military transport planes, according to local reports.