MOSCOW (Reuters) -A Ukrainian drone attacked one of the buildings of the Smolensk nuclear power station in western Russia overnight, but it was downed and no damage or casualties were reported, a subsidiary of Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Friday.
Separately, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-appointed governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, said a Ukrainian drone detonated in the air, adding that such incidents occurred regularly. Staff at the Zaporizhzhia plant have reported two attacks in the past week on a training centre near the plant’s reactors.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early weeks of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and each side has since regularly accused the other of staging attacks.
Ukrainian officials made no comment on either incident reported by Russian officials.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has repeatedly asked both sides to refrain from provocative actions.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Ron Popeski and Lisa Shumaker)
