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Kyiv, Aug. 9 (The Associated Press) At least three Ukrainian civilians were killed and 23 others injured in Russian shelling within 24 hours, including one not far from a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian presidential office reported Tuesday. attack.
Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentin Reznichenko said the Russians had fired more than 120 rockets from the Grad multi-rocket launcher in the southern town of Nikopol, which was divided between Nikopol and Zapo. The Roja nuclear power plant is across the Dnieper River.
Several apartment buildings and industrial facilities were damaged, he said.
In recent days, Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, increasing the risk of a nuclear accident.
In a nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, a Soviet republic at the time.
He called for new sanctions on Russia “to create the threat of another nuclear catastrophe.”
“We are actively informing the world of Russian nuclear blackmail — about the shelling and mining of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant facility,” Zelensky said.
“Russia doesn’t care about words and concerns. The Chernobyl disaster was the explosion of one reactor – the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant was six generators.”
The Kremlin claimed on Monday that the Ukrainian military was attacking the factory and urged Western powers to force Kyiv to stop its activities.
A Russian official in the partially occupied Zaporozhye region said the plant’s air defenses would be reinforced following last week’s shelling.
The head of the Kremlin-backed government, Yevgeny Baritsky, told Russian state television on Tuesday that power lines and damaged neighborhoods at the plant had been restored.
“The plant is operating normally, but of course, the level of safety has increased,” Baritsky said.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive and Russia’s defensive operations in the occupied zone are increasingly directing firepower to southern Ukraine.
After failing to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, early in the war, Russian forces concentrated on trying to capture the Donbas region in the country’s east.
Pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the region for eight years and have taken control of some territory as a self-proclaimed republic.
The British Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that Russian troops had made the most progress in the past month on the town of Bakhmut – limited to about 10 kilometers.
The MoD said: “In other Donbas areas where Russia is trying to break through, its forces have not increased by more than 3km in this 30-day period, almost certainly much less than planned.”
However, the ministry warned that despite the need for attention in southern Ukraine, Russian attacks on positions in eastern Ukraine continued.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, said the Russians were trying to step up their offensive in several areas.
The country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, has been shelled by Russia four times in the past 24 hours, and parts of the city’s infrastructure have been damaged. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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