The Russian city of Kursk, which houses a nuclear power plant facility, was stunned by explosions as Ukraine intensified its operations in the region.
Multiple Telegram channels shared the video of the explosion that happened almost 25 miles away from a nuclear power plant and nearly 68 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.
Kursk, which shares the border with Ukraine’s Sumy region, has become a battlefield these days as Ukraine has already invaded the region and caught Russia off guard.
The fears of a heightened battle in Kursk have also urged more than 90% of locals of the city’s Sudzhansky District to flee for safer destinations.
Russian war correspondent Alexander Sladkov and numerous other war bloggers of the country are speculating that Ukraine wants to capture the nuclear power plant in Kurchatov, although this assertion mostly remains unsubstantiated.
Sladkov noted that Ukraine wants to take control of the power plant and then pressure Russia to leave the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which Russia snatched from Ukraine in 2022.
ZNPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and it is among the first sites that Russia captured after invading Ukraine. The United Nations and International Atomic Energy Association have raised concerns about possible operational hazards at the plant due to the lack of safety protocols and urged Russia to give its control back to Ukraine.
Sladkov also asserted that Ukraine could even leverage its control on Kurchatov’s power plant and ask Russia to pull out all of its forces from the country or be ready for an unprecedented catastrophe. The war correspondent also believes that Ukraine can make the power plant inoperative and deprive Russia of its biggest electricity source.
Dmitri Masinski, the face behind War Translate, an independent project that translates Russia-Ukraine war material into English, suggested that Russia is only propagating conspiracy theories that Ukrainian forces want to capture their power plant.
Masinski added that the power plant is located more than 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, which essentially means that Ukraine would need a massive number of troops and other equipment to first capture and then maintain their hold on the facility.
