Eight persons were detained in connection with an explosion on a bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, according to the major internal security organization in Russia.
The Federal Security Service of Russia, or FSB in Russian, said that it had detained five Russians and three Ukrainian and Armenian nationals in connection with the assault on the Kerch Bridge. On Saturday, a vehicle carrying explosives detonated up as it crossed the bridge, killing four people and bringing down portions of the road.
The bridge became operational four years after Russia took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, establishing Moscow’s domination in the area and providing a vital conduit for Russian tourists and military supplies to reach Ukraine.
According to the FSB, the arrested suspects carried out the covert movement of the explosives into Russia through a complicated path and the fabrication of supporting paperwork under the direction of Ukraine’s military intelligence.
The Ukrainian intelligence directorate and its leader, Kyrylo Budanov, have come under fire from the Russian security agencies. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied claims that it was complicit.
According to Defense Ministry spokeswoman Andriy Yusov, “the whole work of the FSB and the Investigative Committee is rubbish.”
In response to the explosion, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered missile attacks throughout Ukraine, where his troops had been losing territory in the east and south as the Ukrainian military launched a counteroffensive during the previous month.
At least 14 people were killed and 34 were injured in attacks Moscow ordered as reprisal for the bridge assault, according to the Ukrainian president’s office on Wednesday. According to Ukrainian officials, 19 people were killed by Russian missiles on Monday, including five in the capital city of Kyiv.
A disabled nuclear facility in Ukraine lost all external power for the second time in five days as a result of the missile assaults, raising the danger of a radiation catastrophe since vital safety systems need energy to function, according to Ukraine’s state nuclear operator on Wednesday.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power facility experienced a “blackout” on Wednesday morning, according to Ukrainian nuclear power operator Energoatom, after a missile destroyed an electrical substation and forced the emergency shutdown of the plant’s last external power source.
The final remaining outside connection to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected, according to on-site observers from the U.N. nuclear energy inspector, roughly eight hours later. Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that despite the interruption caused by the conflict, it showed “how perilous the situation is” at Europe’s biggest nuclear reactor.
Due to the conflict, all six of the reactors were shut down sooner. However, they still need power to keep them from melting down and boiling to the point where radiation leaks from Europe’s biggest nuclear reactor. According to Energoatom, the facility was being powered by diesel generators, but Russian forces halted a convoy transporting more fuel for the backup machinery.
The weaponization of civil nuclear is essentially what has happened here, maybe for the first time, according to nuclear specialist Paul Dorfman of the University of Sussex in England. And in a world that is becoming more unstable, it’s crucial to comprehend this and what it means for nuclear power globally.
Later, according to the business, Ukrainian employees managed to fix the connection and link the facility to the country’s electrical system. According to Petro Kotin, the head of Energoatom, the facility normally kept enough fuel on hand to power the generators for 10 days, serving as “the station’s final defense before a radioactive mishap.”
Civilian structures were also affected by the shelling. According to Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko on Wednesday, nearly one-third of the nation’s energy infrastructure was destroyed during the previous two days by Russian attacks.
In a morning update, Ukraine’s presidential office said that although strikes on the country’s center and western areas had stopped, eight Ukrainian districts in the southeast had been subject to Russian shelling, drone operations, heavy artillery assaults, and missile attacks in the previous day.
Residential structures were damaged by more than a dozen missiles that were launched towards the city and suburbs of Zaporizhzhia. The city is still under Ukrainian control despite being a part of the wider namesake area that Moscow has annexed in defiance of international law. The nuclear plant’s location, which is around 53 kilometers (33 miles) distant by air, is under the authority of Russian soldiers.
According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy director of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration, at least 14 people have died as a result of Russian bombardment in the eastern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. He posted on Telegram that there were at least 34 casualties across five areas.
On the western edge of an arc of Russian-controlled territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, the southern command of Ukraine said on Wednesday that its troops had regained five communities in the southern Kherson area.
Four territories, Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Luhansk, were recently seized by Russia; this action was denounced by several nations and the U.N. secretary-general as being against international law.
Despite the advance, Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst for Ukraine, claimed that the counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces in the south was losing momentum while they were reassembling in the east to deal a “powerful blow” on the front line between the cities of Svatove and Kreminna in the Luhansk region.
Following Russia’s brutal missile and drone attacks this week throughout Ukraine, Western nations are delivering fresh weaponry or preparing to provide further assistance: On Wednesday, talks between the NATO military ministers and the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group took place in Brussels.