Putin Claims Ukraine Launched Attack On Kursk Nuclear Plant

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of attempting to hit the Kursk nuclear power plant as part of a mass overnight drone strike against targets within the Russian Federation. While providing no public details of the claim, Putin says that he has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the situation.

• As part of the security meeting in which Putin made the claim, Alexei Smirnov - acting governor of the Kursk oblast - said that the situation at the NPP is 'stable'.
• Military action around NPPs is nothing new in the context of the war. The Zaporizhzhia plant has been the site of intense fighting since 2022, with multiple incidents that the IAEA has warned risk a catastrophic deterioration in safety.
• As has been the case during the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk to date, it remains to be seen what the Russian reaction will be to the claimed attack. While Russia has launched retaliatory strikes into the Sumy region of Ukraine it has not yet redeployed forces from the frontlines in Donbas to re-take its own territory.
• Instead, it has sent to the region fresh conscripts with little-to-no battlefield experience, up against some of Ukraine's most highly-trained military units.