ENERGODAR, September 3. /TASS/. An assault force aboard over 15 speed boats is moving towards the city of Energodar from the Kiev-controlled territory, a Zaporozhye region official told TASS on Saturday.

"Around 40 boats are currently moving across Dnepr. At least 15 of those speed boats with a large number of armed people on board are moving towards Energodar," said Vladimir Rogov, a member of the main council of the Zaporozhye Region’s military-civilian administration. "We have not seen waterway activities of this scope during the entire period of the special military operation."

According to the official, the boats departed at around midnight Moscow time from Kiev-controlled territories on both banks of the Dnepr River.

"In the midnight hour, such activities look strange, to put it mildly," he said. "I have no idea of what it all is about, but those people certainly have some kind of an objective, and boats full of those armed people are moving towards our territory."

As the city of Energodar, housing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, was preparing to meet a mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), two Ukrainian sabotage groups comprising up to 60 people in total attempted to cross the Kakhovka water reservoir and disembark around three kilometers away from the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The attack, which occurred at around 06:20 Moscow time, was thwarted by members of the Russian National Guard and army aviation.

Later in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that at around 07:00 Moscow time Ukrainian troops made another attempt to disembark near the NPP, in the vicinity of the Vodyanoe village. The landing was thwarted by Russia’s Armed Forces, when they sunk two self-propelled barges carrying saboteurs that departed from Nikopol.