During its daily briefing, the Russian Defence Ministry said that since the start of the country’s special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, Russian forces have destroyed over 2,000 military facilities, including command and communication centres, anti-missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, and radars.

The ministry added that the Russian army together with militia groups of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR) have been advancing on all fronts.

Earlier this week, Russian President Putin said that his country’s operation was going according to plan, which is about protecting the population in Ukraine’s breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine.

Moscow and Kiev have had two rounds of negotiations in Belarus in the past week, with a third round reportedly expected on 5 or 6 March.

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The recent clashes at the administrative buildings near the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant (NPP) could be a result of Ukraine storing documents on perspective developments of nuclear weapons there, a Russian source familiar with the industry told Sputnik.

“Certain documentation was also available at the Zaporozhskaya NPP. Clashes with Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups in administrative buildings adjacent to the NPP were apparently related to this fact,” the source said.

He added that Ukrainian authorities had partially destroyed and evacuated majority of documents on the issue from Kiev and Kharkov to Lvov.

“Amid increasing tension in relations with Russia, the Ukrainian leadership decided to destroy all valuable documentation stored in the scientific centers in Kiev and Kharkov or evacuate it to the Lviv Polytechnic National University,” the source said.

The source noted that it has been done so Ukraine could “avoid accusations of the Kiev regime that there was a weapons component in Ukraine’s peaceful nuclear program.”

The source also noted that Ukrainian authorities used the Chernobyl NPP for making of a dirty bomb and for the work on plutonium separation.

“According to the available information, the work on both the dirty bomb production and the plutonium extraction were conducted there. The elevated radiation background in the Chernobyl zone concealed such work,” the source said.

Ukraine Confirms to IAEA That 2 Reactors at Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant Operational – Grossi

“Ukraine’s nuclear regulator told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today it had been able to maintain communications with staff at the Zaporizhhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) where two out of six reactors were now operating, a day after Russian forces took control of the site in the country’s south-east,” the statement read.

“In regular updates to the IAEA, the Ukrainian regulatory authority and the plant management also confirmed that the technical safety systems were intact and radiation levels remained normal at Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant,” the statement added.

Source: SPUTNIK NEWS