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Russia Says Ukraine Mounted Drone Attack near Nuclear Plant

Ukrainian volunteers clear debris at the site of a strike on a postal terminal in the Korotych settlement near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, 23 October 2023, the day after a Russian rocket strike. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian volunteers clear debris at the site of a strike on a postal terminal in the Korotych settlement near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, 23 October 2023, the day after a Russian rocket strike. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
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Russia Says Ukraine Mounted Drone Attack near Nuclear Plant

Ukrainian volunteers clear debris at the site of a strike on a postal terminal in the Korotych settlement near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, 23 October 2023, the day after a Russian rocket strike. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian volunteers clear debris at the site of a strike on a postal terminal in the Korotych settlement near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, 23 October 2023, the day after a Russian rocket strike. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV

Russia said on Friday that it had thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack near a nuclear plant in the country's south, where two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste.
The defense ministry said air defenses foiled "an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack" when they intercepted a drone late on Thursday near the settlement of Kurchatov in the southern region of Kursk, Reuters said.
Kurchatov is the location of the Kursk nuclear power station, which said in a separate statement that an attempt to attack it with not one but three drones had been thwarted.
It said there were no casualties or damage, and that radiation levels were normal and the plant was operating as usual.
Baza and Shot, two Russian news outlets with good security sources, both said that two of the drones failed to detonate but the third exploded near the waste storage building.
Kursk is one of several southern regions of Russia that have regularly come under drone attack in the course of the 20-month war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The governor of Kursk reported a previous drone attack on Kurchatov on Sept. 1.
Ukraine generally declines to confirm or deny military operations inside Russian territory.
Thursday night's incident came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian drone attack in Ukraine's western Khmelnitskyi region had probably targeted the area's nuclear power station.
The UN nuclear watchdog said that the attack destroyed "numerous windows" at the site but did not affect the Ukrainian plant's operations or its connection to the electricity grid.

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Monster Hurricane Milton Threatens an Already Battered Florida

The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)
The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)
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Monster Hurricane Milton Threatens an Already Battered Florida

The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)
The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)

The Category 4 Hurricane Milton was expected to grow larger on Tuesday as it threatened Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path.

The densely populated west coast of Florida, still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Wednesday.

The US National Hurricane Center projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than 3 million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.

With maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (250 kph), Milton was downgraded from a category 5 to a category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the US National Hurricane Center's latest advisory early on Tuesday.

While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida, according to the hurricane center. That means catastrophic damage will occur, including power outages expected to last days.

Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the Hurricane Center said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.

Its path from west to east was also unusual, as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after traveling west and turning north.

"It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward, and make landfall on the western coast of Florida," said Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. "This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest."

The Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.

Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Wednesday, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.

Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Rhome told a Monday news briefing.

As of 10 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, the eye of the storm was 65 miles (105 km) north-northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 585 miles (840 km) southwest of Tampa, moving east at nine mph (15 kph).

Milton was expected to pound the northern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula in the early hours of Tuesday.

The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, population 1.2 million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.

In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.

Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.

With one final day for people to evacuate on Tuesday, local officials raised concerns of traffic jams and long lines at gas stations.

Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US Southeast in the wake of Helene, a Category-4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states.