KIEV (AP/Al Jazeera) – Multiple blasts have rocked Crimea with a pro-Moscow official accusing Kiev of launching more than 10 drone attacks, as air raid sirens also blared for several hours overnight across most of Ukraine.
The drone attacks on Sunday came as the United Nations nuclear chief warned of “dangerous” conditions around the Russian Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and the head of the Wagner paramilitary force called on Moscow to let Chechen fighters relieve his forces at the front-line city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Officials and media said Russian air defence systems had repelled the Ukrainian drone attacks and that at least three of the uncrewed vehicles were downed over the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea.
“No objects [in Sevastopol] were damaged,” said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, on the Telegram messaging app.
There were no immediate details of any damage from the attacks elsewhere on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Baza, a Telegram channel with links to Russia’s law enforcement agencies, reported earlier on Sunday that there were no casualties in what it said was a series of attacks on Crimea.
There was no immediate comment from Kiev.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, air raid alerts blared for several hours overnight into early Sunday over roughly two-thirds of the country, with officials saying that air defence systems shot down a number of drones, including one over Kiev’s airspace.
“During the last air alert, an enemy reconnaissance UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] was detected in the airspace of Kyiv,” the military administration of Kyiv said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The drone was destroyed … Preliminarily, there have been no casualties or destruction.”
Raids on Russian-held targets have intensified in the past two weeks, especially in Crimea, while Moscow — citing intensified Ukrainian shelling — has ordered the temporary evacuation of families with children and the elderly from the occupied city of Enerhodar, near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.
Russian forces control about 80 percent of the Zaporizhia region.
The evacuations prompted Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to call for measures to ensure the plant’s safe operations.
“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” Grossi said in a statement on the IAEA’s website. “I’m extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant.”