Nuclear plant inspectors are about to inspect the Zaporzhizhia nuclear power plant which has been under fire and a pawn between the Russians and Ukraine….
The UN’s IAEA boss wants a permeant presence there to preventa Chernobyl (Russian) nuclear plant type disaster….
The Euroepean Countries have agreed to restrict Russian travel into their countries, but not halt it altogether….
The Ukraine military pushes in the Southern party of ‘their’ country ….
The Ukraine will try to send their kids to school for the fall….
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Zaporizhzhia
- IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said the mission aims to establish a permanent monitoring presence at the plant. Grossi met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a short trip to Kyiv before setting off early Wednesday for the days-long mission. Grossi said he secured assurances from Moscow and Kyiv that he and his team will be safe as they travel behind the war’s front lines.
- A senior Russian diplomat endorsed Grossi’s push for a permanent presence at the plant on Wednesday, though Kremlin-installed officials in the region downplayed the scale and scope of the mission.
- Zelensky and his advisers accused Russian forces Tuesday of striking targets on the IAEA’s path to Zaporizhzhia; the Kremlin did not respond to the allegation but said Wednesday it is doing what is necessary to ensure the safety of the mission.
Battlefield updates
- Ukraine may have succeeded in pushing Russia’s “front line back some distance in places” in the south by “exploiting relatively thinly held Russian defenses,” the British Defense Ministry said Wednesday on Twitter. Ukrainian officials have framed the uptick in fighting in the south, particularly around Kherson, as a counteroffensive. But the Pentagon did not describe it as such, and one Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said “counterattack” was too strong a term to describe what he called “a normal operation.”
- Ukraine has temporarily banned journalists from traveling to the front lines, citing unstable conditions there. Illiya Yevlash, press officer for the Ukrainian ground forces, told The Washington Post that journalists should not travel to Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk and parts of the Zaporizhzhia region “until the situation on the front is stabilized.”
- Ukraine’s Defense Ministry asked Crimea residents to inform on the position of Russian forces. “The Ukrainian peninsula is famous for its autumn velvet season! Therefore, we ask all residents to urgently inform us of the ‘most popular’ places to visit,” a ministry statement read on Facebook. On social media, the ministry asked for the exact addresses or coordinates of troop deployment points, routes of military equipment and information about local Russian collaborators.
- Social media posts verified by The Post show thick smoke from a warehouse fire in Russian-occupied Crimea on Aug. 31. No casualties have been reported in the fire that occurred just after 6 a.m. local time near train tracks in the Krasnogvardeyskoye settlement, according to Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. Ukrainian politician Oleksiy Honcharenko identified the building as an oil storage facility.
- A social media video verified by The Post shows smoke and gunfire in the city of Kherson, which has been occupied by Russian forces since early in the war.Other videos posted online in recent days and verified by The Post show signs of damage to infrastructure and residential areas in the region, including smoke near the strategic Antonovsky Bridge, destruction to a market, and bodies and burned military vehicles near the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.
- Russian forces hit the northeastern city of Kharkiv with rockets overnight, injuring two people and damaging residential buildings, according to Oleh Synyehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration. Synyehubov said one of the rockets fell on Russia’s territory. According to ISW analysts, “Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack north of Kharkiv City on August 30,” striking the center of the city and its surrounding settlements. Four people died and 14 more were injured in Monday’s strikes against Kharkiv, Synyehubov said.
- On Thursday, 1,422 schools serving over 320,000 children are set to open in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday. The ministry added that it sent coordinates locating all the schools in the occupied areas to the United Nations, humanitarian organizations and Ukraine to “unconditionally ensure the safety of students and teachers” and accused Kyiv of the “deliberate shelling” of schools and kindergartens….