RUSSIA,UKRAINE: Artillery shells rained down on a city close to Europe’s biggest nuclear plant overnight and Russian missiles hit targets near Odesa, a Ukrainian Black Sea port and a grain export hub, as the war headed for its six-month milestone on Wednesday.
August 24 will also mark 31 years of Ukraine’s independence from Soviet rule and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly video address called for vigilance, saying Moscow could try “something particularly ugly”.
Russian authorities said on Sunday they were investigating a suspected car bomb attack outside Moscow which killed the daughter of Alexander Dugin, an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue who advocates Russia absorbing Ukraine.
While the investigators said they were considering “all versions” when it came to working out who was responsible, the Russian Foreign Ministry speculated there could be a link to Ukraine, something Zelenskiy’s adviser quickly dismissed.
As Ukraine prepared to mark its Independence Day embroiled in a war that has flattened towns and cities, killed thousands and forced millions to flee, military and regional officials reported more Russian strikes on targets in the east and south of the country.
The fighting in the proximity of Zaporizhzia and Saturday’s missile strike on the southern Ukrainian town of Voznesensk, which is not far from Ukraine’s second-largest atomic plant, has spurred fears of a nuclear accident.
In the latest incident, a drone attack on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet was thwarted on Saturday morning, according to a Telegram Post by Mikhail Razvozhayev, Crimea’s Russian-appointed governor, who is not recognised by the West.
– THE MALAY MAIL