Evacuations Spur UN Watchdog Concern Over Ukraine Nuclear Plant

Moscow, May 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th May, 2023 ) :Evacuations from the front line around Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant prompted safety warnings from the UN nuclear watchdog on Saturday, as a string of recent strikes escalate predictions of a looming spring counteroffensive.

Moscow has blamed Kyiv -- and its Western supporters -- for an escalating number of long-range attacks and sabotage operations, including on the Kremlin.

A car bomb on Saturday wounded prominent nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin and killed his assistant in an attack Moscow pinned on both Kyiv and Washington.

The head of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner meanwhile asked Moscow to let Chechen fighters relieve his forces at the flashpoint city of Bakmut in eastern Ukraine.

Citing stepped-up shellings by Kyiv, Moscow has ordered families with children and elderly to temporarily evacuate a slew of Russian-held areas in southern Ukraine, including the town near Europe's largest nuclear plant.

"The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous," IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said in a statement on Saturday. "I'm extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant." The removal order has led to "a mad panic and no less mad queues" at the checkpoint into Russian-annexed Crimea, said Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

With buses ferrying people out every 20 to 30 minutes, he said stations have been drained of gasoline.

"The partial evacuation they announced is going too fast, and there is a possibility that they may be preparing for provocations and (for that reason) focusing on civilians," Fedorov wrote on Telegram.