A Ukrainian terrorist attack on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has been thwarted, Russian officials have said, adding that the plot aimed to render the adjacent city of Energodar without heating during the winter.

“We have received information that our secret services have foiled a terrorist attack on the Zaporozye Nuclear Power Plant,” Nikolay Patrushev, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said on Wednesday.

Vladimir Rogov, a senior Zaporozhye regional official, told news agency RIA Novosti that the alleged plot had been orchestrated by the Ukrainian government.

He said that a cache with explosives had been discovered at the plant and that it had been placed there sometime after Russia’s military operation began in late February and before Moscow’s forces seized the facility in March.

A spokesperson for the Zaporozhye authorities told the outlet that Kiev wanted to destroy the pipeline that delivers heat to Energodar, a city of 52,000 people located just outside the plant, and “leave the population without heating during the winter.” 

According to the spokesperson, the Seсurity Service of Ukraine (SBU) had planned to recruit an employee of the facility and instruct that individual to detonate the bomb.

The plant was captured by Russian troops after Moscow launched its military operation in the neighboring country in late February. Zaporozhye Region eventually left Ukraine and joined Russia after holding a referendum in September.

Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the plant. Patrushev said that Ukrainian troops have been using Western-supplied weapons to target the facility, risking “a global disaster.”

He added that the attacks continued after a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the plant in late August.

“Unfortunately, the visit of an IAEA delegation to the plant did not lead to the cessation of attacks on the plant or to the condemnation of Kiev by the international community,” he said.

Russia also accused Ukraine of planning to detonate a so-called ‘dirty bomb’, a conventional munition with radioactive elements, in order to frame Moscow. Kiev, together with the US and other Western countries, have denied this claim.

This was reported last night as I retired

SIMFEROPOL, November 3- RIA Novosti. The situation on the front line in the Kherson region is now not critical, Russian troops are successfully repelling attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to break through the defense, said Deputy head of the regional administration Kirill Stremousov on the air of the Solovyov Live TV channel.

He clarified that there is no mass accumulation of Ukrainian units on the front line right now.

“They don’t know what to do, because the defense line is so powerful that they don’t know which side to approach from,” Stremousov said.

I do not know if Zero Hedge is behind in its reporting.

I suspect so.

Russia is preparing to order a “compulsory” transfer of tens of thousands of residents in the Kherson region as the fight for the south heats up. This could involve as many as 70,000 civilians in what would mark a large-scale Russian withdrawal from the occupied Ukrainian city. 

Citing Russian officials, The Wall Street Journal reports that “starting Sunday they would begin relocating residents from the Kakhovsky district on the east bank of the Dnipro River due to what they claim is the possibility of a Ukrainian attack on a strategic dam nearby.” Already evacuations have been ongoing for weeks from the city as fighting and heavy shelling encroach. 

And the pro-Russian governor of Kherson Volodymyr Saldo confirmed preparations for a mandated evacuation ahead of advancing Ukrainian forces, which a Russian decree said will be “in a compulsory manner.” Russian officials say this is necessary because Ukraine forces are plotting a “massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydroelectric station” to flood Kherson.

Ukraine has denied these plans of course, and has in turn accused the Russian side of essentially using the large civilian transfer as one big “human shield”:

“They want to create the impression that this is a civilian evacuation. Surrounded by civilians they understand that they have a degree of safety,” said a spokeswoman for the southern command of Ukraine’s armed forces.

They say Russian military vehicles are intentionally mixing with civilian convoys as they exit the region.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media sources are touting that the national armed forces have conducted at least 100 firing missions on Wednesday, conducted by artillery and missile units.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine struck an extremely successful blow on the occupiers in Kherson, hitting the air defense systems at Spartak stadium, which were used to attack Mykolaiv,” a statement from an official with Ukraine’s Kherson Regional Council said on Facebook. 

A report this week in the Associated Press said that many among the recently mobilized Russian recruits have been sent to Kherson front lines, despite official denials from the Kremlin.

From the Eurasian Tsargrad TV