AGENCIES

Fuel stations on the Russian-held Crimean peninsula were out of petrol yesterday, Reuters witnesses said, as a Ukrainian campaign against supply lines to the peninsula escalates.

A Reuters witness in Sevastopol, the peninsula’s largest city, said that there was no fuel at most local petrol stations, with supplies struggling even to keep up with a rationing regime imposed in recent weeks.

Another, in the resort town of Yevpatoriya, said that there was a long queue outside the single working petrol station there.

Ukraine has been intensifying drone strikes on supply lines to the peninsula, which Russia seized from Kyiv in 2014. Local authorities have imposed fuel rationing regimes, with some foodstuffs also running short, reports Reuters.

Meanwhile, an overnight strike has cut off external electricity supply to the Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday.

No release of radioactivity was detected and radiation levels remained normal, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement.

The plant “is currently relying on emergency diesel generators to power the cooling of its six shut-down reactors and maintain other essential nuclear safety functions,” it said. The strike at 9:00 pm on Wednesday hit an electrical substation that supplies the plant. It was the 19th time the plant had lost its off-site power supply since the start of the war in February 2022, the agency said.