Russia-Ukraine war live: claims Russia planning to evacuate nuclear power plant workers; Russian oil pipeline ‘attacked’ | Russia

Russia’s oil pipeline operator Transneft said that a filling point on the Europe-bound Druzhba pipeline in an border area between Russia and Ukraine had been targeted in a “terrorist” attack, according to the Tass news agency.

Transneft said nobody was injured in the incident, which it called a “terrorist attack”, according to Reuters.

“Yes, indeed, early this morning there was an attempt to commit a terrorist act against the Druzhba oil pipeline system at the Bryansk filling station,” Transneft’s spokesman told Tass.

“As a result, no one was hurt. The competent authorities are investigating the circumstances of the incident.”

Early on Wednesday, Baza, a Telegram channel with links to Russia’s law enforcement agencies, reported that three empty oil reservoirs at the Druzhba pipeline’s filling station came under attack.

It said there were no leaks following the attacks.
Russian oil supplies via the Soviet-built pipeline have not been sanctioned, however, European countries are scaling back usage of the route amid wider sanctions against Moscow.

The Druzhba pipeline was attacked several times after the start of what Kremlin casts as a special military operation in Ukraine last February.

• The French parliament has called on the EU to formally label the Russian mercenary group Wagner as terrorists, as the UK reportedly prepares to do the same. France’s parliament unanimously passed a non-binding resolution aimed at encouraging the 27 members of the EU to put Wagner on its official list of terrorist organisations.

• Britain is also set to formally blacklist Wagner as a terrorist organization to increase pressure on Russia, the Times of London newspaper reported on Tuesday. After two months of building a legal case, proscription or a formal blacklisting of the group was “imminent” and likely to be enacted within weeks, the newspaper reported citing a government source.

• Russian forces are planning to “evacuate” more than 3,000 workers from the town that serves the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, resulting in a “catastrophic lack” of personnel, Ukraine’s state-owned Energoatom company claimed on Wednesday. Ukraine’s Energoatom said it had received information about preparations for the evacuation of about 3,100 people from the southern city of Enerhodar, including 2,700 workers who had signed contracts with the Russian-installed company. Ukraine has repeatedly criticised Russia for forcibly deporting its citizens from occupied Ukrainian regions into Russian Federation territory.

• Russia may formally “denounce” the treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe that it pulled out of in 2015, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. The decree formally appoints deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov to represent Putin during parliamentary proceedings on denouncing the treaty, which aimed to regulate the number of forces deployed by Warsaw Pact and Nato countries. Russia announced in 2015 that it was completely halting its participation in the treaty, having already suspended cooperation in 2007. Russia argues that the treaty, which was intended to balance conventional forces towards the end of the cold war, was de facto in breach because former Soviet republics like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Warsaw pact nations like Bulgaria had become members of Nato by the early 2000s.

• The governor of Russia’s Voronezh region said on Wednesday that two drones attempted to attack a military facility in his region, but failed.

• Tass reports that the Russian Federation security service, the FSB, has claimed to have prevented an assassination attempt on a police chief in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region.

• The secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has spoken in Brussels at a meeting of Nato’s military committee. He said the alliance needs to “redouble our efforts” in order to provide security to the 1 billion people in Nato countries, citing what he claimed was a range of rising threats.

Russian forces are planning to evacuate more than 3,000 workers from the town that serves the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, resulting in a “catastrophic lack” of personnel, Ukraine’s state-owned Energoatom company claimed on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s Energoatom said it had received information about preparations for the evacuation of about 3,100 people from the southern city of Enerhodar, including 2,700 workers who had signed contracts with the Russian-installed company.

“The Russian occupiers are proving their inability to ensure the operation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as there is now a catastrophic lack of qualified personnel,” Reuters reports it said in a statement on the Telegram messaging service.

“Even those Ukrainian workers who, having signed shameful contracts, … are going to be ‘evacuated’ soon. And this will exacerbate the already extremely urgent issue of having a sufficient number of personnel to ensure the safety of operation of the NPP (nuclear power plant) even in the current shutdown state.”

Last week, the head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said the situation around the Russian-held nuclear station had become “potentially dangerous” after Moscow-installed officials began evacuating people from nearby areas.

Russia’s Tass state news agency said on Monday the Moscow-installed governor of the Russia-controlled part of the surrounding region had suspended operations at the plant.

Reuters said it was not able to independently verify the reports, and Russia did not immediately comment.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is the largest in Europe, and has been under Russian occupation since the earliest days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Both Ukraine and Russia have accused the other side of endangering nuclear safety by firing at the plant. Ukraine has repeatedly criticised Russia for forcibly deporting its citizens from occupied Ukrainian regions into Russian Federation territory.