Russia sends reinforcements to Kharkiv region amid Ukrainian counter-offensive; Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant situation increasingly precarious, says UN watchdog
Russia said on Friday it was dispatching reinforcements to the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have announced robust gains as part of a broader counter-offensive. Russian state media broadcast footage of columns of Russian tanks, support vehicles and artillery travelling along paved roads and dirt tracks. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his forces had liberated more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region and that fighting continued in the eastern Donbas and the south.
The European Commission has urged EU states to reassess the terms on which they grant visas to Russian travellers and to root out applicants that pose a security threat. “We should not be naive, Putin’s aim is to destroy the EU and he would like to attack us where we are weakest,” the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said on Friday.
The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Friday that it had pushed back against Russian attacks near 10 settlements, the Kyiv Independent reported. The staff said Russian forces had launched more than 12 missiles and more than 12 airstrikes on Ukrainian territory in the past 24 hours.
Shelling has destroyed power infrastructure at Enerhodar, the Ukrainian city where staff operating the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant live. The shelling possed a growing threat to the plant, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday.
The UN nuclear watchdog said conditions at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant were increasingly precarious and that a safety zone around it needed to be immediately established to prevent a nuclear accident. The International Atomic Energy Agency director, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Friday that there was minimal chance of re-establishing reliable offsite power lines to the plant and that its Ukrainian operator was considering shutting down the only remaining operating reactor.
EU finance ministers supported a €5bn ($5bn) loan for Ukraine to help maintain the country’s schools, hospitals and other needed operations amid Russia’s invasion. The loan, agreed on Friday, will be backed by guarantees of EU member states and is part of an overall €9bn package announced in May.
The EU executive have pledged to devise unprecedented measures in the coming days to address an energy price shock as a result of Russia’s war on Ukraine, including a controversial gas price cap that could further anger the Kremlin. European energy ministers tasked the European Commission with working through this weekend to draw up legal texts that will include emergency funding for consumers struggling to afford soaring bills.
A Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region announced on Friday that civilians were being evacuated from three of the region’s Russian-controlled territories that have come under threat from the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
