2023-06-08 16:56:34
Russian artillery fire injured at least nine people on Thursday amid a rescue operation in the flooded southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, with Russia also blaming the Ukrainian army for deadly fire and claiming to have repelled more to the north an offensive of troops and armored vehicles.
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Ukrainians have accused the Russian army of hitting Kherson in recent days as thousands of civilians are evacuated from flooded areas following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam located upstream on the Dnieper River.
“Nine people were injured as a result of a bombardment” on the center of Kherson, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said on Telegram, specifying “not to have received information” on possible deaths as previously announced .
According to the regional governor, Oleksandre Prokudin, among the injured are “two rescuers, a policeman, a nurse and a German volunteer”.
The regional prosecutor’s office also reported “four residents injured” in another strike on a village near Kherson.
“You are heroic,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told rescuers working “under Russian fire” in a message posted on social media after visiting the region where more than 600 km2 were flooded.
At this point, the Ukrainian and Russian occupation authorities count six deaths in the floods.
Offensive repelled according to Moscow
The Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine have for their part accused Kiev of bombardments which killed killed two people, including a pregnant woman, in an evacuation point in Golan Pristan, in the area under Russian control.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also said his troops had countered a Ukrainian offensive in the Zaporizhia region, northeast of Kherson, as Kiev said it was ready to launch an assault. to reconquer the territories occupied by Moscow.
“Today at 1:30 a.m. (Wednesday 22:30 GMT) in the Zaporizhia area, the enemy tried to break through our defenses with (…) up to 1,500 men and 150 armored vehicles,” said Mr. Shoigu in a statement. “The enemy is stopped and retreating with heavy losses,” he said.
Statements, however, unverifiable from independent sources.
The Ukrainian authorities did not immediately mention these events.
Moscow and kyiv reject responsibility for the destruction on Tuesday of the Kakhovka dam located on the Dnieper River, which raises fears of a humanitarian and ecological disaster.
Implicated on Tuesday by Ukraine, which accused it of having dynamited the dam to cut the road to an offensive in the south towards Crimea, Russia asserts on the contrary that it is of a “barbaric” act committed by the Ukrainians.
A Russian representative repeated these accusations Thursday before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), during a hearing on the military support that Ukraine accuses him of having provided to the separatists of Donbass (is) from of 2014.
“Ukraine said that Russia blew up the big dam located in Nova Kakhovka. In fact, Ukraine did it,” Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin told the court.
According to the regional administration, 2,198 people were evacuated. Many others fled on their own.
The emergency services explained that, on the Ukrainian side of the river, “20 localities and 2,629 houses” had been flooded. A man is dead.
On the Russian occupation side, 4,500 people “have already been evacuated”, according to the occupation authorities, and “five people (…) died by drowning”, argued Vladimir Leontiev, the mayor of the city of Nova Kakhovka, installed by Russia.
More than 20,000 consumers are still without electricity, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy, which has asked Europe to provide it with more electricity
No “imminent” nuclear risk
The minister, German Galouchtchenko, declared in addition that the nuclear power plant of Zaporijjia, cooled by the water of the Dnieper, did not present “no imminent risk at this stage but required to be supervised”.
However, the level of the dam’s water reservoir, below the critical threshold of 12.7 meters, is no longer sufficient to supply the basins of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant for cooling operations, explained the operator’s boss. Ukrainian Ukrhydroenergo Igor Syrota.
“In my building, the water has reached the third floor and there are still people there,” she said.
According to an employee of the local meteorological agency, Laura Moussiïane, the water level is 5.33 meters above normal. But “it started to drop a little,” she said.
The day before, Volodymyr Zelensky had deplored the lack of humanitarian aid from the United Nations and the Red Cross, in an interview with the German media Welt TV and Bild.
The Red Cross assured in response to participate in the evacuation operations in Ukrainian territory, with about fifty volunteers. Aid from the United Nations will be increased, according to kyiv on Thursday.
A four-year-old boy, his father and grandfather were also killed in a Russian strike in the Donetsk region (east), Ukrainian police announced on Telegram, which reported five others injured, including four children. .
The Kremlin finally warned on Thursday that Monday’s explosion of an ammonia pipeline in Ukraine, essential for exporting fertilizers, could have a “negative impact” on the future of the crucial grain deal for the country. global food supply, which it is reluctant to extend.
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