Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe's largest nuclear plant early Frid🏅ay, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.
The assault on the eastern city of Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia nucl✱ear plant came as the invasion entered its second week with Russian forces gaining ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea. Elsewhere, another round of talks between the two sides yi൲elded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.
Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were 🐲falling directly on the facility and had set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renov🎃ation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.
Firefighters cannot get near the flames because they are being shot at, he said, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted a p🍒lea to the Russians to stop the assault and allow fire teams inside.
“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Tuz said in a video statement. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biಌggest atomic energy station in Eur🐓ope.”
The attack renewed fears that the invasion could result i🐟n damage to one of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors and trigger another emergency like the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world's worst nuclear disaster, which happened about 110 kilometers (65𒐪 miles) north of the capital.
The American Nuclear Society condemn𒐪ed the attack but said the latest radiatio🐈n levels remained within natural background levels.
“The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country,” the group said in a statement from President S⭕teven Nesbit and Executive Director and CEO Craig Piercy.
The plant's reactor is a different type than the one used at Chernobyl, and there should be little risk if the containment vessel is not damaged and outside power can be res🎃tored, said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a former senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Securityꦫ Council and former special adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
“Everyone needs to take a step back and not jump to conclusions,” Wolfsthal, now a senior adviser at Global 𝔍Zer𓆏o, said on Twitter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was in contact with authorities in Ukraine. The agency's director general, Mariano G🏅rossi, urged military forces to refrain from violence near the plant.
The mayor of Enerhodar said earlier that Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the city's outskirts. Video showed flames and black smoke rising above the city of more th𝄹an 50,000, with people streaming past wrecked cars, just a day after the U.N. atomic watchdog agency expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors.
The Ukrainian state atomic energy company reported that a Russian military column was heading toward🐎 the nuclear p🍬lant. Loud shots and rocket fire were heard late Thursday.
“Many young men in athletic clothes and armed with Kalashnikovs have come into the city. They are breaking down doors and trying to getꦍ into the apartments of local residents,” tꩲhe statement from Energoatom said.
Later, a live streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the Zaporizhzhia plant showed whaꦑt appeared to 𓆉be armored vehicles rolling into the facility's parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted.
There were then what appeared to be bright muzzle flashes from vehicles, followed by nearly simultaneo💖us explosions in the surrounding buildings. Smoke then rose into the frame and drifted away.
While the huge Russian armored column threatening Kyiv appeared bogged down outside the capital, Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firep🍌ower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significaꦯnt gains in the south.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the country's nuclear plants as fighting intensified. "It is a question of the 🤡security of the whole world!” he said in a statement.
The U.S. and NATO allies have ruled out creating a no💜-fly zone since the move would pit Russian and Western military forces against each other.
The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion beg✨an a week ago.
Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water sy🍸stems, as well as m๊ost phone service, officials said. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.
Associated Press video from the port city shows the assault lighting up the darkening sky above largely deserted streets and medical teams treating civilians, including one inside a clinic who appeared to be a child. Doctors were unable to save the 🅠person.
Severing Ukraine's access to the Black and A🍷zov seas would deal a crippling blow to its economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor to Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014.
Overall, the outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainians have put up stiff resista🍸nce, staving off the swift victory that Russia appeared to have expected. But a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia's seizure of Crimea gave it a logistical advantage in that part of the country, with shorter supply lines that smoothed the offensive there.
Ukra☂inian leaders called on the people to defend their homeland by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking ene﷽my columns from the rear. In recent days, authorities have issued weapons to civilians and taught them how to make Molotov cocktails.
“Total resistance. ...🐻 This is our Ukrainian trump card, and this is what we can do best in the world,” Oleksiy Arestovich, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during W🃏orld War II.
The second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was h꧂eld in neighboring Belarus. But the two sides appeared far apart going into the meeting, and Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin's demand for its “demilitarization" and declare itself neutral, renouncing its bid to join NATO.
Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron he wasꦡ determined to press on with his attack "until the end,” according to Macron's office.
The two sides said that they tentatively agreed to allow cease-fires in areas designated safe corridors, and that they would seek to work out the necessary details quickly. A Zelenskyy🍃 adviser also said a third round of talks will be held early next week.
Despite a profusion of evidence of civilian casualties and destruction of property by the Russian military, Putin decried what he called an “anti-Russian disinformation campaign” and insisted that Moscow uses “only🍌 precision weapons to exclusively destroy military infrastructure.”
Putin c🦩laimed that the Russian military had already offered safe corridors for civilians to ꦯflee, but he asserted without evidence that Ukrainian “neo-Nazis" were preventing people from leaving and were using them as human shields.
He also hailed Russian soldiers as heroes in a video call with members of Russia's Security Council, and ordered additional paymen🌟ts to families of men killed or wounded.
A top Russian officer, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, commander of an airborne division, was killed in the fighting earlier this week, an officers organizatio🌺n in Russia reported.
The Pentagon set up a direct communication link to Russia's Ministry o💛f Defense earlier this week to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation sparking conflict between Moscow and Washington, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition ofౠ anonymity because the link had not been announced.
The fighting has sent more than 1 million people fleeing Ukraine, according to the U.N., which fears those refugee numbers could skyrocke𝓀t.
The immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles still appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv an🐭d had made no real progress in days, amid fuel and food shortages, according to US authorities.
