live blog
The town of Kryvyi Rih is without power after a Russian attack. Ukrainian President Zelenskyj sees the new EU aid for his country as a clear signal to the USA and Russia. All developments in the live blog.
The Ukrainian military says it intercepted and destroyed eleven of 24 Russian drones during the night. The Air Force said they were aimed at critical infrastructure facilities in the southeast of the country. After the attack, electricity was switched off in the town of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, national grid operator Ukrenergo said.
Tens of thousands of households and numerous industrial companies in the city in the southeast of the country were cut off from supplies due to damage to a plant, as the Ukrainian energy company Ukrenerho announced. The regional governor Serhiy Lyssak said that the power outage also affected two mining shafts and 100 workers were underground at the time. Some of them were brought to the surface. Authorities said work was underway to restore power supply.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian parties to the conflict cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
The workforce at the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has shrunk from around 11,500 to 4,500 employees under Russian occupation. This was announced by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, before his trip to Ukraine. He wants to visit the power plant near the front again next week. Grossi announced in Vienna that the low staffing level would be a central topic in his discussions with the Russian operators of the nuclear power plant. “It is essential that the power plant has enough qualified and trained personnel for operational safety and protection of the plant,” said Grossi. He warned the United Nations Security Council last week that the staffing levels at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant were “unsustainable” in the long term.
Since Thursday, according to the Russian nuclear power plant management, specialists from the Ukrainian state-owned nuclear company Energoatom have no longer been allowed to work in Zaporizhzhia, as stated in the IAEA management report. Accordingly, only former Energoatom specialists who have signed contracts with the Russian operator, as well as personnel sent from Russia, work at the plant. According to this information, management pointed out to the permanent IAEA observers on site that Russian nuclear power plants operate with significantly fewer personnel than Ukrainian ones. Grossi wants to hold talks with Ukrainian representatives in Kiev on Tuesday and then visit the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. The power plant near the front is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and has been under Russian occupation since March 2022.
The United Nations (UN) highest court is expected to decide today whether it has jurisdiction over a lawsuit filed by Ukraine against Russia. Ukraine filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a few days after the Russian attack in February 2022. The country accuses Russia of waging a war of aggression under the pretext of preventing suspected genocide.
The representative of Ukraine, Anton Korynevych, called on the IHG to declare itself responsible in September last year. More than two dozen European states, as well as Australia and Canada, have supported Kyiv with formal statements to the court, stressing that they believe the case should move forward.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyj described the EU’s decision on a billion-dollar aid package for Ukraine as a clear signal to the USA and Russia. “It is a clear signal to Moscow that Europe remains steadfast and cannot be broken by destructive waves from the Kremlin,” the president said in his nightly video address. At the same time, it is also a clear signal across the Atlantic that Europe is assuming its responsibility when it comes to security. “We now expect decisions from the USA,” said Zelensky.
The US presidential election campaign and a possible return of Donald Trump cast their shadows there: US President Joe Biden has not been able to get the promised billions in military aid for Ukraine through the US Congress for weeks.
According to Ukrainian sources, two Frenchmen were killed in a Russian attack on the city of Beryslav in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson. “Foreign volunteers were killed and injured in an enemy attack on Beryslav,” the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on the Telegram online service. “The Russian army killed two French citizens. Three other foreigners were slightly injured.”
A Ukrainian was also injured in the attack, the governor added. Ukrainian police said it was a Russian drone attack. The French people killed were two men and the injured were three men and one woman. “All the victims had come to the Kherson region as volunteers,” police said.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian parties to the conflict cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
President Zelenskyj thanked the EU states for the new billions in aid. The Ukrainian commander-in-chief Zalushnyj fears a shortage of ammunition. Thursday’s developments to read.