The regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk said Russia fired 60 rockets at Nikopoli, across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian supervision since Moscow troops seized it early in the war. About 50 residential buildings were damaged in the city of 107,000 and residents were left without electricity, Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had warned on Tuesday that the situation was becoming more dangerous by the day at the Zaporizhia plant in the city of Enerhodar. “Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated” at the plant, he said. “What is at stake is extremely serious and extremely serious and dangerous.” He expressed his concern about the way the factory was operating and the danger posed by the fighting around it. He mentioned the bombings at the beginning of the war when it was occupied and the ongoing cases of Ukraine and Russia blaming each other for attacks there. Experts at the US-based Institute for the Study of War said they believed Russia was bombing the region deliberately, “putting Ukraine in a difficult position”. “Either Ukraine fires back, risking international condemnation and a nuclear incident – which Ukrainian forces are unlikely to do – or Ukrainian forces allow Russian forces to continue firing on Ukrainian positions from an effective ‘safe zone’” , the think tank reported. Russia’s seizure of Zaporizhzhia renewed fears that the largest of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants could be damaged, triggering an emergency similar to the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world’s worst nuclear disaster, which occurred about 110 km ( 65 miles) north of the capital. Kyiv. Also in the Zaporizhzhia region, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the Russian military hit two Ukrainian ammunition depots near the village of Novoivanivka and a fuel depot near the Zaporizhzhia train station. In northern Ukraine, the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, was bombed by the Russians, the Ukrainian presidential office said. Several industrial facilities were hit in the city, which was a frequent target. In the nearby town of Chuhuiv, a rocket hit a five-story residential building. Fighting continued in the hotly contested Donetsk region in the east, with Ukrainian authorities saying a school was destroyed in the village of Ocheretyne. The attacks have cut off gas, water and electricity supplies and residents of the area are being evacuated. In the city of Toretsk, artillery shells hit a bus stop, a church and apartment buildings, killing at least eight people, regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said. In the city of Donetsk, Russian-backed separatists accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the central part of the city on Thursday. The area hit was near a theater where a farewell ceremony was being held for a prominent separatist officer who was killed a few days ago. Donetsk Mayor Alexei Kulemzin said six people were killed. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukrainian involvement. He claimed, without offering evidence, that Russian or separatist forces were responsible for the bombing. Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of shelling territory under their own control. Russian forces have already captured the Luhansk region that borders Donetsk. Its Ukrainian governor, Serhiy Haidai, said on social media that locals are being mobilized by the Russian side to fight against Kiev’s forces and that “even essential mine workers are being captured.” Ukrainian authorities reported another kidnapping of a mayor who allegedly refused to cooperate with the Russians in the southern region of Kherson, which is also almost entirely occupied. The reported abduction of Serhiy Lyakhno, mayor of the village of Hornostaivka, comes as Russia is massing more troops in the region in anticipation of a counterattack from Kyiv and ahead of a planned referendum on the region becoming part of Russia.
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