KYIV-Russia on Thursday targeted Ukraine with a barrage of missiles in strikes which Moscow said were in response to a border incursion earlier this month. Ukraine said it downed nearly half of the missiles launched by Russia over at least 10 regions, with fighting raging in eastern Bakhmut.
The conflict has revived tensions in the neighbouring pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria in Moldova, where Moscow-backed authorities accused Ukraine of plotting a “terror attack”. “In response to the March 2 terrorist actions organised by the Kyiv regime in the Bryansk region, Russia’s Armed Forces dealt a massive retaliation strike,” the defence ministry said, adding that it had used the lauded Kinzhal hypersonic missile. The ministry was referring to claims that Ukrainian nationalists had crossed into the southern Bryansk region and killed two civilians, which Kyiv dismissed as a provocation. The Russian barrage on Thursday struck the relatively peaceful Lviv region in Ukraine’s west, causing the first civilian deaths there in a long time, and left the country’s second city of Kharkiv in the northeast without power, water or heating.
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“The enemy fired 81 missiles in an attempt to intimidate Ukrainians again, returning to their miserable tactics,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Ukraine nuclear plant
outages an ‘unacceptable risk’: France
France on Thursday warned of the “unacceptable risk for nuclear safety and security” from power cuts at a major Ukrainian power plant, after a Russian missile strike left it running on diesel generators.
“France has taken note and is concerned over information of a new disconnection (from the grid) at the Zaporizhzhia plant,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said. Electricity is essential to operate pumps that circulate water to cool reactors and pools holding nuclear fuel at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
The disruption came during a fresh wave of pre-dawn Russian strikes targeting energy infrastructure across the country. The plant is being powered by generators, which can provide the facility’s energy needs for 10 days, Ukrainian nuclear energy operator Energoatom has said. The UN nuclear agency’s chief warned earlier on Thursday of the danger of repeated electricity cuts at the site.
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IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said it was the sixth time the Zaporizhzhia facility had been cut off from the electricity grid since Russia captured it a year ago, and the first time since November. Grossi has been in consultations with Kyiv and Moscow for several months to try to set up a protection zone around the plant, but the talks appear to have stalled.
France “will continue to support IAEA action towards ensuring nuclear security and safety in Ukraine and in particular its director general towards establishing a protection zone around the station,” Legendre said.