August 29, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

A team of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are on their way to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine and will be there "later this week," IAEA Chief Rafael Mariano Grossi tweeted Monday. 

Nuclear fears: The mission — which will assess damage to the plant's facilities, evaluate the working conditions of the staff, and perform urgent safeguard activities — comes amid renewed shelling at the facility and mounting fears over a potential nuclear accident.

Shelling occurred in the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar near the plant on Sunday night, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other for the attacks. The IAEA said in a statement Sunday that shelling in recent days hit a "special building" located just 100 meters from from the plant's reactor buildings.

Who is traveling? When CNN reached out to the IAEA on Sunday about the makeup of the expert mission, the nuclear watchdog declined to comment, saying it would not make such information public and that "all IAEA missions have members from different Member States, selected on the basis of their relevant expertise. They are international civil servants representing the IAEA, not their countries."

Shelling occurred in the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Sunday night, Russian and Ukrainian officials said — with each side blaming the other for the attacks.

Dmytro Orlov, the Ukrainian mayor of Enerhodar, said the shelling took place in the third and fifth micro districts of the city about 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) from the nuclear plant.

The shelling set cars on fire and a residential building "suffered a direct hit," he said.

Yevhen Balytskyi, head of the Russian-backed Zaporizhzhia region civil-military administration, said nine people were injured in three targeted hits on residential buildings.

Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Russian-appointed council in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia, blamed the attack on "Zelensky militants."

The shelling comes just days before a team of international experts with the United Nations nuclear watchdog is expected to visit the plant to help ensure nuclear safety and security at the site.

Kyiv's response: Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian President's Office, condemned the attacks.

Some context: Kyiv and Moscow have made a barrage of accusations against each other about security and military action at and around the Zaporizhzhia power plant, the largest nuclear complex in Europe. But the lack of independent access to the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March, makes it impossible to verify what is happening there.

Over the past month, a number of rockets and shells have landed on the territory of the plant, according to satellite imagery analyzed by CNN. CNN is unable to verify what strikes occurred, nor who was responsible.

The city of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region suffered more than 200 attacks in a 6-hour time span, Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration wrote in a Telegram post on Sunday. 

The city also came under attack for 14 hours straight, he said.

Two children and their mother were injured in the shelling, he added.

Shelling in the vicinity of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant over the past few days hit a "special building" located just 100 meters from its reactor buildings, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in a statement on Sunday.

The buildings that were hit contained facilities like water treatment plants, equipment repair shops or waste management facilities.

Shelling in the area around the plant has been ongoing since Thursday but Ukraine does not have complete information yet on the nature of the damage, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said in the statement.

Grossi said safety systems at the plant remain operational, there has been no increase in radiation levels, radioactivity levels are within a normal range, there is no indication of hydrogen leakage, and the plant has continued access to off-site electricity after it temporarily lost connection to its last remaining operational power line on Thursday — which was restored later that day.

Two reactor units that were disconnected from the electricity grid on Thursday were reconnected on Friday and are operational, the IAEA chief added. The other four units were disconnected before Thursday’s shelling and are still not operating.

Upcoming visit: An IAEA expert mission is expected to visit the plant in "the next few days" to help ensure nuclear safety and security at the site. The mission will assess damage to the plant's facilities, evaluate the working conditions of the staff, and perform urgent safeguard activities.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are expected to go to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia power plant "in the next few days" amid renewed shelling at the facility and mounting fears over a potential nuclear accident.

IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi "said he was continuing his consultations with all parties with the aim to send an IAEA expert mission to the #ZNPP in the next few days to help ensure nuclear safety and security there," the United Nations' nuclear watchdog tweeted on Sunday.

Grossi himself is a member of the team participating in the expert mission, according to a report from the New York Times. The Times says it saw Grossi on a list of names, which also included "13 other experts from mostly neutral countries."

"Neither the United States nor Britain, countries that Russia scorns as unfairly biased because of their strong support for Ukraine, is represented," the Times reported.

Read more here.

As the war in Ukraine has passed the six-month mark, US and European officials say Ukraine has successfully used a method of resistance warfare developed by US special operations forces to fight back against Russia and bog down its vastly superior military.

The Resistance Operating Concept was developed in 2013 following Russia's war with Georgia a few years earlier but its value was only realized after Russia's invasion of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014. It provides a blueprint for smaller nations to effectively resist and confront a larger neighbor that has invaded.

Russia's nearly bloodless takeover and annexation of the occupied territory stunned Ukraine and the West, intensifying a study of how to build a plan for total defense that included not only the military, but also the civilian population.

Read the full story here.