KYIV: Russia fired waves of drones and other munitions at Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least four people and damaging a nuclear storage facility in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukrainian officials said.
Radiation levels at the facility remained within normal limits following the attack, although the building’s reception was “partially destroyed”, according to Ukraine’s Energoatom nuclear energy operator.
Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fifth year, remain stalled and sidetracked by the conflict in the Middle East.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet his allies in London later Sunday for talks on how to pressure Russia to end the fighting, after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected direct peace talks with the Ukrainian leader.
“A ‘shahed’ hit one of the buildings of the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility,” Zelensky said in a post on X, referring to the Iranian-designed “Shahed” drones that Russia fires at Ukraine on a nightly basis.
“As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels. But there is certainly an increase in Russia’s brazenness, which long ago went off the charts,” he added.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was dispatching a team to inspect the damage, calling the incident “deeply concerning”.
The facility is located in a remote area of forest around a dozen kilometres (seven miles) from the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and is designed to house spent nuclear fuel from Ukraine’s three active nuclear plants.
Russian strikes killed and wounded multiple civilians on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said.
A Russian bombardment of a public transport stop in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region left at least two people dead, while a nearby drone strike killed a 56-year-old minibus driver, authorities said.
A separate attack on the central Dnipropetrovsk region killed a 59-year-old man, governor Oleksandr Ganzha posted on Telegram.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions forced to flee their home since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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