Putin, who did not elaborate on the incident or provide evidence to back up his claim, made the comments in a meeting with senior officials.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose lightning invasion of Kursk, Russia’s biggest by a foreign power since World War II, saw thousands of Ukrainian troops cross Russia’s western border on August 6, taking Moscow by surprise. Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, told Putin at the same meeting that the situation at the Kursk nuclear power plant was stable.
Earlier, Smirnov said that 133 thousand people left the eight border regions of the Kursk region, but 19 thousand people remained.
Meanwhile, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, will soon go to the nuclear plant in the Russian Kursk region, which is located on the border with Ukraine and is the target of a Ukrainian attack.
“We can confirm” this visit “next week,” a spokesman for the agency told AFP today without elaborating, as the invasion that began on August 6 poses risks to the local nuclear power plant, according to Russia’s Rosatom nuclear power agency. .
The IAEA had called for “maximum restraint” around the area a few days later, as fighting raged nearby, “in order to avoid a nuclear accident that could have serious radiological consequences”.
Rafael Grossi had said at the time that he was “personally in touch with the competent authorities of the two countries” in order to “continue informing the international community” about the situation, which was then under control according to the Russians.
Since the start of the war, the IAEA has issued frequent warnings about the risk of a nuclear accident, most notably at the Zaporizhia station in Ukraine, which has been occupied since March 2022 by Moscow.
While out of service, it has been the target of repeated attacks that Russia and Ukraine blame on each other.
Yesterday, Wednesday, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that Rafael Grossi confirmed that he is ready to visit the Kursk nuclear power plant at the end of August.
“We expect that the understanding of the danger posed by Ukrainian provocations against Russian nuclear plants will lead the IAEA management to take clear action to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhia and Kursk nuclear plants,” Zakharova said at the weekly press conference.
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