Russian missile attacks killed three people and injured at least eight more in Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia in a second day of deadly attacks on the region, its governor, Ivan Fedorov, said. Seven apartment blocks and an industrial building as well as medical and educational facilities were damaged, authorities said. Prosecutors released images showing a car buried under rubble and concrete and iron pillars that had collapsed. Another three people in the Pologivskyi district were wounded, Federov said on social media.
Four guided bombs hit the town of Bilopillia in Ukraine’s northern region of Sumy, killing a woman, authorities said. At least three more people were wounded in the attack that damaged shops and a city council building.
The Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station said a drone had been shot down over reactor number six. The drone fell on the roof, it said on Monday, releasing a picture of the reactor, which has been shut down. Moscow said Ukraine struck the station three times on Sunday, calling the attacks “very dangerous”, but Kyiv denied responsibility. The Guardian is unable to independently verify either account. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief earlier condemned an earlier strike on the Zaporizhzhia reactor. “This cannot happen,” Rafael Grossi said on social media, adding: “No one can conceivably benefit or get any military or political advantage from attacks against nuclear facilities. This is a no-go.”
Russia has called an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors over the attacks on the nuclear plant, Moscow’s ambassador to the watchdog, Mikhail Ulyanov, said.
Russia has hit up to 80% of Ukraine’s conventional power plants and more than half its hydroelectric plants in recent weeks, Ukraine’s energy minister said. “This is the largest attack on Ukraine’s energy sector” since the war began, German Galushchenko said, adding that he suspected Russia had modified its weapons to now use Iranian-style explosive drones and missiles that cause more damage per attack.
The UK foreign minister, David Cameron, will meet the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Tuesday on a trip to Washington involving pressing lawmakers in Congress to pass a military aid package for Ukraine. Cameron has said he will urge the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to pass the $60bn package, which he has held up for months. Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo added his voice on Monday to growing calls from prominent Republicans to pass the package, after some party members accused aid opponents of succumbing to Russian propaganda.
Russia and China will continue their cooperation in the fight against terrorism, including through multilateral mechanisms, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in Beijing after holding talks with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. “I thank the Chinese side for their condolences in connection with the terrorist attack in the Moscow region on March 22 of this year, for supporting Russia’s fight against terrorism,” Russian news agencies cited Lavrov as saying.
France’s foreign minister said it was no longer in Paris’s “interest” to talk to Russia after differing accounts emerged from a rare phone call about last month’s deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall. Stéphane Séjourné told broadcasters France24 and RFI that the Russian officials’ accounts were “lies”.
The US treasury secretary threatened sanctions on Chinese banks that support Russia’s military capacity. Janet Yellen said as she wrapped up four days of talks with China that “any banks that facilitate significant transactions that channel military or dual-use goods to Russia’s defence industrial base expose themselves to the risk of US sanctions”.
The Kremlin warned that a planned German military presence in Lithuania would escalate tensions. The Nato military alliance and EU member Lithuania, which borders Russia and its ally Belarus, said earlier it would partly finance the permanent hosting of 5,000 German troops from 2027.
