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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy claimed that a Ukrainian nuclear power plant was the likely target of an overnight Russian drone attack in western Ukraine that wounded 20 people.
“It is most likely that the target for these drones was the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power station. The shock wave from the explosion shattered windows, including on the nuclear power station’s premises,” Zelenskiy said on October 25 in his nightly video address.
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Zelenskiy added that every Russian strike “especially those daring enough to target nuclear power stations and other critical facilities, serves as an argument that pressure on the terrorist state is insufficient.”
The Energy Ministry said earlier on Telegram that windows in administrative and laboratory buildings were damaged as a result of the explosion.
Power lines were also damaged, the ministry added, putting more than 1,800 customers in the towns of Netishyn and Slavuta at risk of power cuts. Both towns are just kilometers from the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its experts present at the plant said air-raid sirens went off at 1:26 a.m. local time and were followed later in the morning by the sound of two loud explosions. The IAEA experts were told that two drones had been shot down — one about 5 kilometers from the plant and the other about 20 kilometers away.
“This incident again underlines the extremely precarious nuclear safety situation in Ukraine, which will continue as long as this tragic war goes on,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a statement. “The fact that numerous windows at the site were destroyed shows just how close it was. Next time, we may not be so fortunate.”
Grossi said the blasts did not affect the power plant’s operations or its connection to the national electricity grid, but IAEA experts observed some of the shattered windows at the site. He also noted that the power outage in Slavuta forced two of the plant’s 11 off-site radiation monitoring stations to temporarily rely on back-up power supplies.
In Slavuta, a building used by a fire and rescue unit and another by a police department were hit by the blast wave, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram.
Local residents reported that several high-rise buildings had been damaged; in particular, people’s windows have been broken, according to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
The town’s mayor, Vasiliy Sydor, said 20 people were hurt in Slavuta as a result of the attack.
Elsewhere, a local resident was killed in an early morning air attack on Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.
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Kyiv drove Russian forces out of part of the Kherson region last November after several months of occupation, but Russian troops have continued shelling the regional capital and areas around it from across the Dnieper River.
Prokudin said that over the past 24 hours, Russian forces had carried out 35 aerial attacks on the Kherson region.
The Ukrainian military said on Facebook that Ukrainian air-defense systems had destroyed all 11 Russian drones launched at Ukraine overnight.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a report dated October 24 that Russia appears to be relying more on cheaper and lighter domestically produced drones instead of Iranian-made Shahed drones.
In its daily update, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on October 25 that “80 combat clashes” had taken place over the past day.
It said Ukrainian forces had repelled more than 10 attacks in and around Avdiyivka, a town in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region that has largely been turned to rubble due to Russian bombing.
Russian forces pounded Avdiyivka on October 24, but heavy losses forced them to switch to air attacks and rely less on full-on ground advances, Ukrainian officials said.
“The enemy dropped about 40 guided aerial bombs in two nights. But the number of ground assaults has been reduced, half of what it was yesterday and the day before,” Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern group of forces, told Ukrainian TV. “This is not surprising as over the past five days, the enemy has lost about 2,400 dead and wounded in the Donetsk region.”
Most of those casualties, he said, were near Avdiyivka and the nearby long-contested town of Maryinka.
Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiyivka’s military administration, said the town was enduring unrelenting artillery and air attacks.
“The enemy is persistently trying to surround the city and is throwing in new forces from the north and south,” Barabash told Ukrainian TV late on October 24. “For two days, they have been operating mostly in small groups, trying to find cracks in our defense, but without success. The defense line is holding.”
With reporting from Reuters
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