Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - On Monday, Russian forces continued their offensive in several parts of Ukraine, while President Volodym...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - On Monday, Russian forces continued their offensive in several parts of Ukraine, while President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that more serious attacks could happen before the 31st anniversary of Ukraine's independence from Soviet rule.
Over the weekend, artillery shells fell on the city of Nikopol, which is close to Europe's largest nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia, and missiles hit the area near the Black Sea port of Odesa.
Zelenskiy has asked people to be careful, saying that Moscow could try "something particularly ugly" before Wednesday, which is both Ukraine's Independence Day and the half-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Zelenskiy said that he and French President Emmanuel Macron had talked about "all the threats," and that he had also told other leaders, like Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Zelenskiy said about Russia in his nightly video address, "All of Ukraine's partners have been told what the terrorist state can plan for this week."
He also said that if Russia went ahead with its plans to try captured Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol, it would have broken international rules and cut itself off from negotiations.
"If this disgusting show trial went forward, this would be the point where negotiations could no longer happen," he said. "There will no longer be any talk. Our state has said all there is to say."
In an article published Sunday by the Financial Times, Gennady Gatilov, Moscow's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said that Erdogan had tried to make it easier for people to talk.
But he shot down rumors that Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin would talk, saying that "there was no practical way for this meeting to happen," the report said.
Authorities in Russia are looking into a possible car bomb attack outside of Moscow that killed Alexander Dugin's daughter. Dugin is an ultranationalist Russian ideologue who wants Russia to take over Ukraine.
Investigators said they were looking at "all possibilities" when trying to figure out who did it. The Russian Foreign Ministry thought there might be a link to Ukraine, but a Zelenskiy adviser shot that idea down.
Mykhailo Podolyak said on Ukrainian TV, "Of course, this has nothing to do with Ukraine. We are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, and we are also not a terrorist state."
MORE RUSSIAN STRIKES
As Ukraine got ready to celebrate its Independence Day in the middle of a war that has destroyed towns and cities, killed thousands, and forced millions to flee, officials said that Russia had hit more targets in the east and south of the country.
In the eastern Bakhmut region, Russian forces damaged the Soledar, Zaytseve, and Bilogorivka settlements with artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems, the Ukrainian General Staff said in its daily report on Monday.
The General Staff said that they kept putting most of their efforts into taking full control of the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. They also kept the captured areas of Kherson and parts of Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, and Mykolaiv.
The shelling of Nikopol is a big cause for concern.
Four people were hurt when rockets were fired at the Dnipropetrovsk region's Nikopol, Krivyi Rih, and Synelnykovsky districts overnight, the region's governor wrote on Telegram on Monday.
The Donetsk region is in the east of Ukraine. In the last 24 hours, two civilians have been killed there, the local government said.
Russia says it is not aiming at civilians.
Fears of a nuclear accident have grown because of fighting near Zaporizhzhia and a missile attack on the southern town of Voznesensk, which is close to Ukraine's second-largest nuclear plant.
On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron talked on the phone. They talked about how important it is to make sure nuclear installations are safe and how they are "committed" to Ukraine.
Moscow says it is in the middle of a "special military operation" to disarm and "denazify" its neighbor. Ukraine and its allies say that Russia started a war of aggression without any reason.
Russia said on Sunday that its Kalibr missiles had destroyed an ammunition depot with missiles for U.S.-made HIMARS rockets in Ukraine's southeastern Odesa region. This area has ports that are important to a U.N.-brokered plan to help Ukrainian agricultural exports reach world markets again.
Kyiv said that a grain store was hit.
