Ukraine: In light of reports from the Ukrainian military that Russian forces have attacked dozens of front-line towns, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed grave concern about shelling at a nuclear power plant in that country. Since President Vladimir Putin's country invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what he called a "special military operation," the conflict has devolved into an attrition war that is largely being fought in the east and south of the country.
Fighting over the southern Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was taken by Russian forces in the first phase of the conflict but is still run by Ukrainian technicians, has raised concerns about a wider catastrophe. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi issued a statement saying, "I'm extremely concerned by the shelling yesterday at Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster."
Both sides have charged one another with committing "nuclear terrorism."
While Russia's defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant, the damage was attributed to Russia by Ukraine's state-owned nuclear power company Energoatom. While the Russian defence ministry claimed that only because of the "skillful, competent, and effective actions" of its units had the plant not been damaged, the United States accused Russia of using it as a "nuclear shield." Grossi, who is in charge of the UN's nuclear watchdog, pleaded for "utmost restraint" on all sides.
On Friday, shells struck a high-voltage power line at the facility, causing its operators to disconnect a reactor even though no radioactive leak was found.
The war raged on in the east and south while the world's attention was diverted to the nuclear plant.
The Luhansk and Donetsk provinces make up the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region in the east, where pro-Moscow separatists took control after the Kremlin annexed Crimea to the south in 2014. Late on Saturday, the Ukrainian military reported that Russian forces had shelled numerous front-line towns and were attempting to attack in six different areas in the Donetsk region, but that Ukrainian forces had managed to repel all of them. Reuters was unable to confirm the claims made by either side regarding the state of the battlefield.
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, claimed on Saturday that his country's forces had "achieved powerful results" in destroying Russia's logistical support and rear bases over the previous week. He declared in a late-night video address that "every strike on the enemy's ammunition depots, on their command posts, and on accumulations of Russian equipment saves the lives of all of us, the lives of Ukrainian military and civilians."
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shelling damages the power lines at the nuclear plant in Ukraine