After an explosion in Crimea, Moscow speaks of “sabotage”, while Kyiv speaks of a “masterstroke.” The Ukraine has attacked a base of the Wagner mercenary group. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found in the ticker.

6:50 p.m .: Russia has complained about malfunctions at one of its nuclear power plants in the border region with Ukraine – and has blamed citizens of the neighboring country. In the past two weeks, “Ukrainian sabotage groups” have detonated explosive devices on a total of six electricity pylons in the Kursk region, the Russian domestic secret service FSB said on Tuesday, according to the Interfax agency.

The allegations against Ukraine, against which Russia has been at war for almost half a year, could not be independently verified. According to the FSB, the Kursk nuclear power plant has meanwhile experienced “a disruption in the technological operating process”. The Russian secret service said they were looking for those responsible. In addition, according to official information, Russian nuclear power plants are now to be protected even better.

1:46 p.m .: According to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, the explosions in a Russian military base in Crimea are due to an “act of sabotage”. The ammunition depot, located in the north of the annexed peninsula, was damaged, as well as civilian infrastructure, including a high-voltage power line, a power plant, a railway line and several houses, the statement said. Who could be behind it, left the explanation open.

According to Russian information, a fire on Tuesday morning at around 5:15 a.m. (CEST) triggered the explosion in the temporary weapons storage facility. According to Crimea Governor Sergey Aksyonov, two civilians were injured and residents of a neighboring village were evacuated.

The head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, described the explosion in the online service Telegram as an “operation ‘demilitarization'” and praised it as a “masterstroke of the Ukrainian armed forces”. These would continue their work until all Ukrainian territories were “completely liberated”.

Tuesday, August 16, 8:50 a.m.: According to Moscow, a fire broke out on a Russian military base on the Crimean Peninsula and ammunition then exploded. The fire broke out around 5:15 a.m. (CEST) in a temporary ammunition depot at the base in the Dzhankoy district in the north of the peninsula annexed by Russia, according to a statement by the Ministry of Defense in Moscow published by the Russian news agencies. According to the Crimean governor, two civilians were injured.

8:50 p.m .: According to their own statements, the Ukrainian army attacked a base of the Russian mercenary group Wagner in eastern Ukraine. The base of the Wagner group was destroyed in the precision attack, said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, on Monday.

The Wagner mercenary group is considered Russia’s “shadow army” and is associated with crisis regions such as Syria, Libya and Mali. There are suspicions that she is linked to the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is believed to be a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The mercenaries are accused of serious human rights abuses, including torture and targeted killings. Moscow denies any connection to the group.

According to Ukrainian sources, saboteurs also blew up a railway bridge southwest of the Russian-held city of Melitopol in southern Ukraine. As a result, no more military trains are coming from the Crimean peninsula, wrote the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fyodorov, in the online service Telegram.

8:31 p.m .: The southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol will probably have to do without heat in winter. This was announced by the city’s mayor, Ivan Fyodorov, according to the Kyiv Independent. The reason for this is that the Russian occupiers would not have time to repair the heating infrastructure before the beginning of winter. Melitopol is 95 percent heated with gas. The city had had to do without this fuel for three weeks now.

6:36 p.m .: According to the authorities, explosions can be heard around the Ukrainian nuclear power plant (NPP) Zaporizhia, which is occupied by Russian troops. The area of ​​the nuclear power plant, located in the city of Enerhodar, and residential areas were shelled 25 times with heavy artillery, crew representative Vladimir Rogov said in his blog on Telegram on Monday. Accordingly, grenades struck there. According to Ukrainian Mayor Dmytro Orlov, who fled Enerhodar, explosions were heard in the power plant city.

Ukraine accuses Russia of engaging in “nuclear terrorism” with the shelling. Crew representative Rogov said Ukrainian “terrorists” would fire the shots. He had also previously proposed a cease-fire. Ukraine demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from the largest European power plant. Russia refuses to hand over the nuclear power plant. According to Kyiv, it has already attacked the power plant site with combat drones.

5:04 p.m .: In Ukraine, the situation was extremely dangerous, especially around the contested Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Russia rejected the immediate withdrawal of its troops from the nuclear power plant, which had been contested for days, as demanded by 42 countries and the EU on Sunday. “The leadership of the United Nations and the chief diplomat of the EU should not be talking about demilitarization, but about introducing a ceasefire,” Vladimir Rogov, a representative of the Russian occupation authorities, told Russia’s state-run Ria Novosti news agency.

For days, Russia has held the Ukrainian side responsible for the attacks on the nuclear power plant in the city of Enerhodar on the Dnieper – which in turn blames the Russians. UN Secretary-General António Guterres last week warned of a nuclear catastrophe and also called for the area to be demilitarized. A ceasefire would be very advantageous for the Russian troops in the region, because they would then have a safe base near the front at the nuclear power plant, which has been occupied since March.

4:40 p.m .: Russia’s military reports attacks by its troops in eastern and southern Ukraine. In the past 24 hours, more than 100 “foreign mercenaries” have been killed and more than 50 injured in the Kharkiv region, including Germans and Poles, said Defense Ministry spokesman in Moscow Igor Konashenkov. This information could not be independently verified. The governor of Kharkiv, Oleh Synyehubov, only spoke of Russian rocket attacks on industrial buildings and infrastructure, but gave no information on possible victims.

Konashenkov also reported airstrikes on the Kherson regions in the south and Donetsk regions in the east, as a result of which more than 420 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. That too could not be verified. According to him, a Ukrainian command post near the strategically important city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region was also shot at.

The Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv also reported massive attacks in the east and south of the country; in the Donetsk region an attempt by the enemy to break through the line of defense towards Sloviansk was repelled. The situation is largely unchanged, it said in Kyiv.

Monday, August 15, 9:52 a.m.: According to British intelligence experts, Russia’s plans for a referendum in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk on joining the Russian Federation are well advanced. Whether a final decision has already been taken in Moscow to hold such a referendum is not yet clear, according to the British Defense Ministry’s daily intelligence update on the Ukraine war on Monday.

The fact that the region is still not under full Russian control is likely to be seen by the Kremlin as a setback for its “maximist goals in Ukraine,” the experts said.

Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine at the end of February, the British government has regularly published intelligence information on its progress. Moscow accuses London of a targeted disinformation campaign.

8:58 p.m .: According to the local mayor, the situation around the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporizhia is becoming more and more precarious. The risk of a nuclear catastrophe at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant “is growing every day,” the mayor of Enerhodar, where the nuclear power plant is located, said in a phone call to AFP on Sunday. The Russian army is shelling “the infrastructure that ensures the safe operation of the power plant,” added Dmytro Orlov.

A civilian was killed. The dead man was an employee at the nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian power plant operator Enerhoatom reported on Telegram. By some accounts he had walked his dog. Two other residents of the city were injured, Enerhoatom said. About six bullets would have hit a residential area in the afternoon.

“What is happening is downright nuclear terrorism,” criticized Enerhodar’s mayor Orlov from the city of Zaporizhia, which is still under Ukrainian control. “It can end unexpectedly at any time.” The fire protection rules are violated again and again and the situation “continues to heat up”.

“The invaders continue to terrorize the civilian population and the nuclear power plant,” criticized the mayor. Mortar shells are fired at from the occupied villages every day and every night. “The situation is risky and what worries most is that there is no de-escalation process,” Orlov told AFP.

The mayor had already left Enerhodar in April. According to him, the city was shelled for the first time at the weekend. The number of those who wanted to leave the city had increased dramatically. In the “near future” there may not be enough staff for the proper operation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

6:56 p.m .: Russia says it has fired on targets in dozens of towns in new rocket and artillery attacks in eastern Ukraine. The attacks were concentrated on the Donetsk region, in the neighboring region of Kharkiv the village of Udy had been taken, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced in Moscow. The information could not be verified by an independent party. The Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv also reported massive attacks in the east and south of the country.

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