KYIV, Ukraine: The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog on Tuesday described the situation at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant as “very fragile” following fresh attacks near the site in central Ukraine, and vowed to expand the agency’s inspections to include critical electricity supplies.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was making his 10th visit to Ukraine since the Russia-Ukraine war began in February 2022.
He was headed to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant after talks in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top energy officials.
“I think the situation – I have very often characterized it – as very fragile,” Grossi told reporters in the Ukrainian capital. “The station is again on the verge of being on a blackout. We’ve had eight of those in the past. A blackout (means) no power: no power, no cooling. No cooling, then maybe you have a disaster.”
Earlier, Grossi posted on X that he was on his way to Zaporizhzhia to “help prevent a nuclear accident.”
The Zaporizhzhia plant, which came under Russian control in the wake of its full-scale invasion, saw artillery shelling in the area on Monday that damaged the facility’s power access, according to its operator Energoatom, which blamed Russia for the attacks.
“Russian shelling damaged one of the two external overhead lines through which … the Zaporizhzhya NPP receives power from the Ukrainian power system,” the operator said in a post on Telegram. “In the event of damage to the second line, an emergency situation will arise,” the Ukrainian agency said, adding that technicians couldn’t access the site of the damage because of the “real threat of repeated shelling.”
Analysts say an explosion at the Zaporizhzhia plant would produce radiation and likely trigger panic, but the radiation risk beyond the immediate blast area would be relatively low and nothing like the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Also, if the wind is in an easterly direction, radiation could be pushed toward Russia.
The Zaporizhzhia region is one of four — along with Donetsk, Kherson and Luhansk — in southern and eastern Ukraine that Russia partly, and illegally, annexed in September 2022, seven months after it invaded its neighbor.
The Vienna-based IAEA says ongoing attacks in the Zaporizhzhia area, as well as damage to Ukraine’s grid, pose threats to the power supply that’s vital to the country’s nuclear power stations. The watchdog said its staff at Zaporizhzhia recently had to shelter indoors because of reported drone threats in the area.
Other than Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine has three active nuclear plants.
Grossi, who is traveling with a team of IAEA experts and officials, began a round of meetings in Kyiv with a stop at the Ministry of Energy and talks with the minister, Herman Halushchenko. Grossi said he had accepted a Ukrainian request to expand inspections to include electricity substations providing power to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. He did not give further details but told reporters: “This is a new dimension, an important dimension I hope, of our support here, which we discussed and agreed with President Zelensky just now.” ___ Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
UN nuclear watchdog warns conditions ‘very fragile’ at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant
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UN nuclear watchdog warns conditions ‘very fragile’ at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant
- Analysts say an explosion at the Zaporizhzhia plant would produce radiation and likely trigger panic, but the radiation risk beyond the immediate blast area would be relatively low
Germany has stopped approving war weapons exports to Israel, source says
- A source close to the ministry cited a senior government official as saying it had stopped work on approving export licenses for arms to Israel pending a resolution of legal cases
- Legal challenges across Europe have also led other allies of Israel to pause or suspend arms exports
BERLIN: Germany has put a hold on new exports of weapons of war to Israel while it deals with legal challenges, according to a Reuters analysis of data and a source close to the Economy Ministry.
Last year, Germany approved arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros ($363.5 million), including military equipment and war weapons, a 10-fold increase from 2022, according to data from the Economy Ministry, which approves export licenses.
However, approvals have dropped this year, with only 14.5 million euros’ worth granted from January to Aug. 21, according to data provided by the Economy Ministry in response to a parliamentary question. Of this, the “weapons of war” category accounted for only 32,449 euros.
A source close to the ministry cited a senior government official as saying it had stopped work on approving export licenses for arms to Israel pending a resolution of legal cases arguing that such exports from Germany breached humanitarian law.
The ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
In its defense of two cases, one before the International Court of Justice and one in Berlin brought by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the government has said no weapons of war have been exported under any license issued since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, apart from spares for long-term contracts, the source added.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, according to the local Hamas-controlled health ministry. It has also displaced most of the population of 2.3 million, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies. No case challenging German arms exports to Israel has yet succeeded, including a case brought by Nicaragua at the ICJ.
DISAGREEMENT ON ARMS EXPORTS IN GERMAN GOVERNMENT
But the issue has created friction within the government as the Chancellery maintains its support for Israel while the Greens-led Economy and Foreign ministries, sensitive to criticism from party members, have increasingly criticized the Netanyahu administration.
Legal challenges across Europe have also led other allies of Israel to pause or suspend arms exports.
Britain this month suspended 30 out of 350 licenses for arms exports to Israel due to concerns that Israel could be violating international humanitarian law.
In February, a Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to halt all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns about their use in attacks on civilian targets in Gaza.
President Joe Biden’s administration this year paused — but then resumed — shipments of some bombs to Israel after US concerns about their use in densely populated Gaza.
Approvals and shipments of other types of weapons, in more precise systems, continued as US officials maintained that Israel needed the capacity to defend itself.
Alexander Schwarz, a lawyer at ECCHR, which has filed five lawsuits against Berlin, suggested that the significant decline in approvals for 2024 indicated a genuine, though possibly temporary, reluctance to supply weapons to Israel.
“However, I would not interpret this as a conscious change in policy,” Schwarz added.
Hungary refuses to pay fines for breaking EU asylum rules
- The European Court of Justice described Hungary’s actions as “an unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law”
- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán slammed its ruling as “outrageous and unacceptable”
BRUSSELS: The European Union on Wednesday began the process of clawing back hundreds of millions of euros in funds meant to go Hungary after its ant-migrant government refused to pay a huge fine for breaking the bloc’s asylum rules.
In June, the EU’s top court ordered Hungary to pay 200 million euros ($223 million) for persistently depriving migrants of their right to apply for asylum. The court imposed an additional fine of 1 million euros for every day it failed to comply.
The European Court of Justice described Hungary’s actions as “an unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán slammed its ruling as “outrageous and unacceptable.”
The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, said that given Hungary’s failure to pay or provide information about its intentions, Brussels is “moving to what we call the off-setting procedure” by taking the money from common funds that would otherwise go to Budapest.
“So, what we are going to do now is to deduct the 200 million euro from upcoming payments from the EU budget toward Hungary,” commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said. He said it would take time to identify which parts of Hungary’s funding could be deducted.
Ujvari said the commission has also sent a first payment request on the daily fines amounting to 93 million euros ($103 million) so far. “Counting from receipt, the Hungarian authorities will have 45 days to make that payment,” he said.
Hungary’s staunchly nationalist government has taken a hard line on people entering the country since well over 1 million people arrived in Europe in 2015, most of them fleeing conflict in Syria.
The case against it concerned changes Hungary made to its asylum system in the wake of that crisis, when some 400,000 people passed through Hungary on their way to Western Europe.
The government in Budapest ordered fences with razor wire to be erected on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and a pair of transit zones for holding asylum seekers to be set up on its border with Serbia. Those transit zones have since closed.
In 2020, the ECJ found that Hungary had restricted access to international protection, unlawfully detained asylum applicants, and failed to observe their right to stay while their applications were processed.
The transit zones were closed in 2020, shortly after that ruling.
But the commission, which is responsible for monitoring the 27 EU member states’ compliance with their shared laws, took the view that Budapest had still not complied and requested that the ECJ impose a fine.
After the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020, the government also pushed through a law forcing asylum seekers to travel to Belgrade or Kyiv to apply for a travel permit at its embassies there before entering Hungary. Only once back could they file their applications.
People have the right to apply for asylum or other forms of international protection if they fear for their safety in their home countries or face the prospect of persecution based on their race, religion, ethnic background, gender or other discrimination.
Gavi to buy 500,000 mpox vaccine doses from Bavarian Nordic
- Gavi said it will spend up to $50 million on the plan, which includes the transportation, delivery and costs of administering the vaccines
- Around 3.6 million doses of mpox vaccine have already been pledged to the DRC by rich nations which have stockpiles, WHO has said
LONDON: The global vaccine group Gavi will buy 500,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s mpox vaccine, its first purchase of the shot to help battle an outbreak in parts of Africa, the group said on Wednesday.
In 2024, there have been more than 25,000 suspected mpox cases and 723 deaths in Africa, mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the World Health Organization, which has declared the outbreak a global health emergency.
Gavi, a public-private alliance which co-funds vaccine purchases for low-income countries, said it will spend up to $50 million on the plan, which includes the transportation, delivery and costs of administering the vaccines. The doses are due to be delivered this year.
Around 3.6 million doses of mpox vaccine have already been pledged to the DRC by rich nations which have stockpiles, the World Health Organization has said, but only a small portion has arrived so far. The WHO approved the vaccine for use on Friday last week.
Gavi’s purchase, using a new facility set up after the COVID-19 pandemic to respond quickly to public health emergencies, could speed up the response in Congo and other affected countries.
Also on Wednesday, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said it would provide $9.5 million to support Congo with its emergency response at the request of the government there, including surveillance, laboratory systems and risk communication.
The price of the vaccine was not disclosed. Gavi’s $50 million investment would likely equate to less than around $100 per vaccine, because transportation and logistics are included in the total. The figure is lower than previous estimates of the cost.
Gavi chief executive Sania Nishtar said the priority was working with partners “to turn these vaccines into vaccinations as quickly and effectively as possible and, over time, to build a global vaccine stockpile.”
The deal will significantly increase the availability of mpox vaccine for African countries, Bavarian Nordic chief executive Paul Chaplin said. Last week, the company said it would push back some existing orders to 2025, based on US government contracts, to focus on market needs now.
Mpox, which spreads through close contact and typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions, has been a public health problem in parts of Africa for decades. But vaccines have never previously been available outside clinical trials in affected countries in Africa, even after a different strain of the virus spread globally in 2022 and high-income countries used vaccines to help stem the outbreak.
Pakistan police arrest key suspect in gang rape of a woman polio worker
- Police also detained husband of attacked woman for kicking her out of home and threatening to kill her over allegedly tarnishing the family’s honor by being raped
MULTAN: Pakistani police arrested the key suspect in the gang rape of a woman polio worker who was assaulted by three men during last week’s vaccination campaign, officials said Wednesday. Two other suspects are still at large.
The assault on Thursday in Jacobabad, a district in the southern Sindh province, was one in a spate of attacks targeting polio vaccination teams going door to door in the campaign across Pakistan.
The woman who was attacked had alerted the authorities, saying she was raped by three men after going into a house in Jacobabad to administer polio drops to the children there, local police official Mohammad Saifal said.
The suspect, identified as Ahmad Jakhrani, was arrested overnight, Saifal added.
Police are still seeking the arrest of the two other men, accused of taking turns to assault the woman, Saifal said. A local police chief was fired for negligence following the attack, for failing to provide the polio worker with adequate security.
The attack shocked many Pakistanis as such sexual assaults are rare, though women polio workers have complained of harassment in the past during the campaigns. The provincial government in Sindh has said it would fully investigate the case.
Police also detained the husband of the attacked woman for kicking her out of their home and threatening to kill her after the assault over allegedly tarnishing the family’s honor by being raped.
So-called honor killings, in which women and girls are slain by their own relatives for allegedly dishonoring the family’s reputation, are still common in Pakistan.
Saifal also said police have been deployed to the house where the woman was now staying with her relatives for her protection.
Anti-polio campaigns in Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants often target polio vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Since January, Pakistan has reported 17 new cases of polio, jeopardizing decades of efforts to eliminate the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease from the country. Polio often strikes children under age 5 and typically spreads through contaminated water.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in which the spread of polio has never been stopped. Pakistan’s government is planning another polio vaccination drive in October.
Ukrainian drones strike a major military depot in a Russian town northwest of Moscow
- Ukraine claimed the strike destroyed Russian military warehouses in Toropets about 380 kilometers northwest of Moscow
- The attack was carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service, along with Ukraine’s Intelligence and Special Operations Forces
KYIV: Ukrainian drones struck a large military depot in a town deep inside Russia overnight, causing a huge blaze and prompting the evacuation of some local residents, a Ukrainian official and Russian news reports said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a senior US diplomat said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said he has a plan for winning the war that “can work” and help end the conflict, which is now in its third year. But the Ukrainian leader hasn’t publicly spelled out the plan.
Ukraine claimed the strike destroyed Russian military warehouses in Toropets, a town in Russia’s Tver region about 380 kilometers (240 miles) northwest of Moscow and about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the border with Ukraine.
The attack was carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service, along with Ukraine’s Intelligence and Special Operations Forces, a Kyiv security official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the operation.
According to the official, the depot housed Iskander and Tochka-U missiles, as well as glide bombs and artillery shells. He said the facility caught fire in the strike and was burning across an area 6 kilometers (4 miles) wide.
Among the destroyed ammunition were North Korean KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles, another official, in Ukraine’s Intelligence Office, told The AP. He was not authorized to comment publicly and didn’t provide evidence to support his claim.
Russia and North Korea signed a landmark pact last June that envisioned mutual military assistance between Moscow and Pyongyang.
More than 100 domestically-produced kamikaze drones were deployed in the attack on the depot, the Ukrainian Intelligence Office official added.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted regional authorities as saying air defense systems were working to repel a “massive drone attack” on Toropets, which has a population of around 11,000. The agency also reported a fire and the evacuation of some local residents.
There was no immediate information about whether the strikes had caused any casualties.
Successful Ukrainian strikes on targets deep inside Russia have become more common as the war has progressed and Kyiv developed its drone technology.
Zelensky is also seeking approval from Western nations for Ukraine to use the sophisticated weapons they are providing to hit targets inside Russia. Some Western leaders have balked at that possibility, fearing they could be dragged into the conflict.
Ukraine’s targeting of Russian military equipment, ammunition and infrastructure deep inside Russia, as well as making Russian civilians feel some of the consequences of the war that is being fought largely inside Ukraine, is part of Kyiv’s strategy.
The swift push by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk border region last month fits into that plan, which apparently seeks to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to back down.
Putin, however, has shown no signs of backing down, and has been trying to grind down Ukraine’s resolve through attritional warfare and also sap the West’s support for Kyiv by drawing out the conflict. That has come at a price, however, as the UK Defense Ministry estimates that the war has likely killed and wounded more than 600,000 Russian troops.
On Tuesday, Putin ordered the country’s military to increase its number of troops by 180,000 to a total of 1.5 million by Dec. 1.
Zelensky last month said his plan for victory includes not only battlefield goals but also diplomatic and economic wins. The plan has been kept under wraps but the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said during a news conference Tuesday that Washington officials have seen it.
“We think it lays out a strategy and a plan that can work,” she said, adding that the United States will bring it up with other world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York next week. She did not comment on what the plan contained.
