Ex-president barred from leaving Ukraine amid alleged plan to meet with Hungary’s Viktor Orban

KYIV, Ukraine — Former President Petro Poroshenko was denied permission to leave Ukraine for a planned meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Ukraine’s security service said Saturday.

Poroshenko announced Friday that he had been turned away at the border despite previously receiving permission from Parliament to leave the country. Under martial law, Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years of age are not allowed to leave the country without special approval.

The 58-year-old, who lost his re-election bid in 2019 to current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that he had planned to meet with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, and the Polish parliament during his trip.

But security officials said that Poroshenko had also agreed to meet Orban, who has previously praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and refused to support Kyiv’s bid for EU accession. In a statement on social media, they said such talks would make Poroshenko a “tool in the hands of the Russian special services.”

Poroshenko, who called his experience at the border an “attack on unity”, is yet to comment on the allegation that he planned to meet Orban.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was left on “the verge of a nuclear and radiation accident” Saturday after it was unable to draw power from two of the lines connecting it to the local energy grid, the country’s nuclear energy operator said.

It said that the plant switched to diesel generators to stop the plant from overheating before off-site power was restored by Kyiv.

Russia occupied the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early stages of the war. Over the past year, the station has become a focal point of concern for international observers, with both Moscow and Kyiv accusing each other of shelling the plant.

In a statement on social media, Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, accused Moscow of “incorrect, erroneous, and often deliberately risky operation of the equipment” at the site.

The Associated Press was unable to independently verify the claims.

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been monitoring safety at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations.

Although the plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia launched 11 Iranian-made Shahed drones and one guided cruise missile overnight Saturday, military officials said. The missile and all but one of the drones were reportedly destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said that it had shot down two Ukrainian C-200 rockets over the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine’s spy agency staged two successive explosions on a railroad line in Siberia that serves as a key conduit for trade between Russia and China, Ukrainian media reported Friday. The attacks underscored Moscow’s vulnerability amid the war in Ukraine

Ukrainska Pravda and other news outlets claimed the Security Service of Ukraine conducted a special operation to blow up trains loaded with fuel on the Baikal-amur Mainline, which runs from southeastern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean in the Russian Far East.

The media cited unidentified sources in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, a regular practice in claims of previous attacks in Russia. The security service, which is known in Ukrainian as SBU for short, has not confirmed the reports.

The first explosion hit a tanker train in the Severonomuisky tunnel in Buryatia early Thursday, causing a fire that took hours to extinguish, Russian news outlets said. The 9.5-mile tunnel in southern Siberia is the longest in Russia.

A second explosion hours later hit another train carrying fuel as it crossed a 35-meter (115-foot) high bridge across a deep gorge while traveling on a bypass route, according to the Ukrainian news reports.

Russian railways confirmed the tunnel explosion but didn’t say what caused it.

Russian daily business newspaper Kommersant cited investigators saying an explosive device was planted under one of the train’s carriages.

There was no comment from Russian authorities on the second explosion.