Seven loud explosions rocked the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzia early Thursday as Russian rockets slammed into residential buildings, killing at least one user and trapping five cabins, according to the local governor. The city is the largest in Ukraine’s southern region of the same name, the most of which remains occupied by Russian forces, adding the city of Enerhodar, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The city of Zaporizhzia, however, remains under Ukrainian control.
Ongoing fighting around the nuclear power plant has fueled fears for months of a potentially disastrous reactor breakdown. The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sent a team to the facility last month, but Russia has so far ignored calls from the UN, Ukraine, the United States and many other countries to withdraw their forces.
A 3-year-old woman was among those rescued from collapsed buildings after the most recent rocket attacks, the local governor said.
The Zaporizhzia region is one of 4 that Russian President Vladimir Putin officially annexed on Wednesday after holding referendums condemned by the US and Ukrainian governments as a “farce”.
The UN chief, along with the government of Ukraine, the United States and other foreign allies, called annexation a blatant and illegal appropriation of land under foreign law. Ukraine’s foreign minister said Thursday that Putin’s resolution is “null and void. “
The Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant has been damaged in fighting in recent months, and some of the Ukrainian personnel who operated it despite their profession have been kidnapped by Russian forces.
The IAEA leader will visit Ukraine this week for talks with officials blamed for Russia’s annexation of the region around the plant. Director General Rafael Grossi is also expected to speak about efforts to create a demilitarized cover zone around the expanding nuclear facility.
On Wednesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had taken control of 3 more villages in the Kherson region, just southwest of Zaporizhzia. This is part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has seen Ukraine retake a significant part of the territory occupied by Russia in just a few minutes. A few weeks, adding a key city.
In the newly retaken town of Lyman, bombed Russian convoys were deserted along highways, still filled with the unpublic belongings of Russian infantrymen seeking to flee the counteroffensive. reported correspondent Charlie D’Agata, who visited the city on Wednesday.
“There were so many bombings. I stayed in the basement,” Lyman resident Sveta told D’Agata. “My husband is disabled, so I take care of him. “
Lyman had served as a key logistics hub for professional Russian forces for months after Putin introduced his invasion on Feb. 24, temporarily taking over the city and much of the domain surrounding it. It was a major defeat for his forces when Ukrainian troops recaptured it. D’Agata notes that the damage to the city is overwhelming. As winter approaches, the homes still in state in Lyman have no running water, electricity or heat.
Despite the Ukrainian military’s good fortune in retaking the city, another Lyman resident told CBS News they had already lost everything.
“Victory? My god. . . It’s a dead village,” the woman, named Nadia, told D’Agata. “Where is the victory? They destroyed the village and that’s it. “