Russian missiles slam into city near nuclear plant
KYIV, UKRAINE — Russia launched missiles that hit apartment buildings in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, a local official said Thursday, killing three people and wounding at least 12 in a region that houses Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant and which Moscow illegally annexed.
The two strikes, the first before dawn and another in the morning, damaged more than 40 buildings, local authorities said. The attacks came just hours after Ukraine’s president announced that the country’s military had retaken three more villages in another of the four regions annexed by Russia, the latest battlefield reversal for Moscow.
The Zaporizhzhia region’s governor, Oleksandr Starukh wrote on Telegram that many people were rescued from the multi-story buildings, including a 3-year-old girl who was taken to a hospital.
Photos provided by the
Emergency Service of Ukraine showed rescuers scrambling through rubble in the wreckage of a building looking for survivors.
Starukh said of Russia: “The terrorist country has shown its beastly face by converting defense weapons into offensive weapons and killing peacefully sleeping people.”
Zaporizhzhia is one of the regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed as Russian territory in violation of international laws and is home to a nuclear plant that is under Russian occupation. The city of the same name remains under Ukrainian control.
The head of the U.N.’S atomic energy watchdog is expected to visit Kyiv this week to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant after Putin signed a decree Wednesday declaring that Russia was taking over the six-reactor facility.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the move a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” The state nuclear operator, Energoatom, said it would continue to operate the plant.
Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plans to discuss efforts to set up a secure protection zone around the facility, which has been damaged during Russia’s war in Ukraine and seen staff, including its director, abducted by Russian troops.
Grossi plans to travel to Moscow for talks with Russian officials after his stop in Ukraine.
The U.S. government sent its international development chief to Kyiv on Thursday, the highest-ranking American official to visit Ukraine since Russia illegally annexed the four regions.
The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, was holding meetings with government officials and residents. She said the U.S. would provide an additional $55 million to repair heating pipes and other equipment.