An employee at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has been killed in a car bomb attack that Ukrainian military intelligence said punished a “war criminal”. Russia’s investigative committee, which probes serious crimes, said Andrei Korotkiy died after a bomb planted under his car went off near his house in the city of Enerhodar, where the plant is located, on Friday morning. Korotkiy worked in the plant’s security department, the committee said, adding a criminal case was opened into his death. Ukrainian military intelligence published a video of his car exploding and in a statement called Korotkiy a “war criminal” and collaborator, accusing him of repressing Ukrainians and of handing Russia a list of the plant’s employees and then pointing out people with pro-Ukrainian views. Authorities at the plant – Europe’s largest, with six nuclear reactors – condemned Ukrainian authorities for orchestrating the killing.
Ukraine said it hit an oil depot in Russia’s Voronezh border region in a drone attack that reportedly caused a huge blaze. A source in the SBU security service told Agence France-Presse a depot with 20 fuel and lubricant tanks was hit in the drone attack overnight to Friday. “The enemy’s air defences were active but unsuccessful,” the source said, adding there were reports of a “massive fire”. Russian emergency services reported a fire was raging over 2,000 sq metres (21,500 sq ft) in a warehouse storing hydrocarbon products in the Voronezh region. The Voronezh regional governor earlier confirmed a Ukrainian drone strike.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday he had visited the northern Sumy region, from where Ukraine launched a major incursion into Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region. “It is crucial to understand that the Kursk operation is a really strategic thing, something that adds motivation to our partners, motivation to be with Ukraine, be more decisive and put pressure on Russia,” the Ukrainian president said. Shown visiting Ukrainian troops alongside his top army commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Zelenskyy thanked the military and said the incursion “greatly helped” Kyiv to secure the latest military support packages from the west. Almost two months into the surprise operation, Kyiv’s troops control swathes of Russian border territory, though the pace of the advance has slowed and Moscow’s forces have begun to counterattack.
Romania recovered fragments of a Russian drone from a canal in the Danube Delta near the Ukrainian border, the defence ministry said on Friday. Romania shares a 650km (400-mile) border with Ukraine and has had Russian drone fragments fall on its territory repeatedly over the past year.
Ukrainian investigators alleged on Friday they had found stacks of cash totalling almost $6m during a raid of the home of a state official suspected of helping men dodge mobilisation. The raid was part of an investigation into an illegal scheme to register would-be draft dodgers as disabled. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) swooped on the home of an official in charge of the regional medical commission in the western Khmelnitsky region and her son, a manager in Ukraine’s state pension fund. Separately, in the eastern Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had detained 13 people over a similar scheme.
Belarus on Friday sentenced 12 people to prison terms of up to 25 years on terrorism charges over the 2023 sabotage of a Russian military plane that was claimed by pro-Ukraine activists. In February last year, a group of opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime said they had destroyed a Russian army spy plane at a base outside Minsk. Russia did not comment on the operation and Minsk initially denied it but later called it an act of terrorism and blamed Ukrainian security services. Belarus prosecutors said on Friday that Minsk city court sentenced 12 people accused of involvement in the “terrorist attack” at Machulishchy airbase to prison terms from two years and three months to 25 years. Only five of the group are in Belarus.
Russia on Friday sentenced a Crimean man to 14 years in a penal colony on treason charges after it accused him of aiding the Ukrainian military. Russian media said the FSB security service had accused Igor Kopyl, 47 – a resident of Sevastopol, the Crimean port where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based – of assisting Kyiv’s armed forces and preparing a “terrorist” attack. The FSB said Kopyl was a former member of the Ukrainian navy and had been recruited by Kyiv in 2022.
Ukrainian feminist activists on Friday staged a topless protest outside the embassy of Iran, which Kyiv and the west say is arming Russia. Ukraine’s Femen group is a feminist art collective that has for years staged demonstrations in Ukraine and abroad. Agence France-Presse reported seeing two activists take their shirts off near the Iranian embassy building in Kyiv, chanting and displaying anti-Iran and anti-Russia slogans written on their bodies.
