Show only key events Please enable JavaScript to use this feature Ukraine’s Atomic Energy Organization accused Russia of using Europe’s largest nuclear plant to store weapons and bomb the surrounding areas of Nikopol and Dnipro, which were hit on Saturday. Petro Kotin, president of Ukraine’s Energoatom nuclear agency, called the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “extremely tense,” with up to 500 Russian soldiers monitoring it, Agence France-Presse reports. The plant in southeastern Ukraine has been under Russian control since the first weeks of Moscow’s invasion, but is still operated by Ukrainian personnel. Russian rockets hit residential buildings in the city of Nikopol on Saturday, killing two people, Dnipro regional governor Valentin Reznichenko said. In the northeastern region around Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, the governor, Oleg Sinegubov, said a Russian missile attack overnight killed three in the city of Chugiv. Russia is preparing for the next stage of its offensive in Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian military official, after Moscow said its forces would step up military operations in “all operational areas”. Russian rockets and missiles have hit cities in raids that Kyiv says have killed at least 40 people over the past three days. “It’s not just missile attacks from the air and sea,” Vadim Skibitsky, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence, said on Saturday. “We can see shelling all over the contact line, all over the front line. There is active use of tactical aviation and attack helicopters… It is clear that preparations are now underway for the next stage of the offensive.” The Ukrainian military said Russia appeared to be regrouping units for an attack on Sloviansk, a symbolically important Ukrainian-held city in the eastern Donetsk region.
Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. As it approaches 10am in Kyiv, here’s a rundown of the latest developments.
Seven civilians were evacuated from the Sviatohirsk Lavra in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Among those evacuated is a family with three children and two elderly people, according to the intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s defense ministry. The youngest displaced person was born just a few days earlier in a monastery. Ukraine’s armed forces are advancing “confidently” towards Kherson in southeastern Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian military spokesman. Natalia Hemeniuk, head of the press center at Operation Command South, “talking about what is happening directly in the Kherson direction, we are moving there,” he said. “Maybe we are not moving as fast as those who present positive news would like, but believe me, these steps are very sure.” Russian forces are preparing for a new attack, the Kyiv Independent reports. According to Vadym Skibitsky, a spokesman for the intelligence directorate at Ukraine’s defense ministry, the Russian activity signals that “undoubtedly, preparations for the next stage of offensive actions are underway.” The war in Ukraine “concerns the West as a whole”, but at the same time it must not lead to “forgetting Africa’s security needs”, said French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornou. “We have a form of myopia in Europe and France, where the Ukraine war is mobilizing all our energy, and that’s natural – it’s a conflict that concerns the West as a whole,” Lecornou said in Ivory Coast on Saturday after the visit in Niger. “No Russian missile or artillery can break our unity,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on Saturday. In a speech on the anniversary of Ukraine’s Declaration of State Sovereignty, he added: “It should be equally obvious that it cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, forgeries or conspiracy theories.” All the bodies have been identified after the Russian missile strike in Vinnytsia, the governor of the region announced. According to the governor of the Vinnytsia region, Serhii Borzov, 68 people are currently hospitalized, of which 14 are in serious condition. Rescue operations after the attack have been completed. Twenty-three people were killed, 202 injured, one person missing and three others rescued in the city of central-western Ukraine, according to the country’s state emergency service. About 100 to 150 civilians have been killed by Russian military raids in Ukraine over the past two weeks, according to the Pentagon. In a briefing on Friday, a senior US military official said: “I think it’s all been said over the course of the week … we’re looking at between 100 and 150, somewhere around there, civilian casualties, civilian deaths, this week in Ukraine as a result of Russian raids”.
