Fears of a nuclear catastrophe worse than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were raised overnight into Friday when Russian shelling hit Europe's largest power plant, causing a fire that was later extinguished.
Russian forces now occupy the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine, the country's nuclear inspectorate said, adding that the nuclear facilities are intact and undamaged. Nuclear scientists called the attack "astonishing" and unprecedented.
The incident came as Russian forces made gains in Ukraine's south, seizing one key port city and encircling another.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to grow, with more than 1 million people displaced so far. Ukraine and Russia tentatively agreed in talks Thursday to create humanitarian corridors to allow the safe passage of civilians. The Biden administration is offering temporary immigration protections to Ukrainians already in the United States. The head of Ukraine’s security council called on Russia to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women and the elderly to escape the fighting. Oleksiy Danilo said Friday, more than 840 children have been wounded in the war. A day earlier, the Ukrainian government put the death toll among children at 28. He spoke ahead of the latest talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations, planned for this weekend. “The question of humanitarian corridors is question No. 1,” Danilo said on Ukrainian television. “Children, women, elderly people — what are they doing here?” Russian troops have encircled and blockaded several large cities in the south of the country, including Mariupol, trying to cut Ukraine off from the Black and Azov seas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at NATO on Friday, saying in a speech that the 30-nation alliance “gave a green light” for the continued shelling of the country after the group rejected calls for a no-fly zone. “All the people who will die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, your disunity,” Zelenskyy said, according to an NBC News translation. “All that the NATO alliance was able to do to this day is arranged for the 50 tons of fuel for Ukraine.” Perhaps the country could use that fuel to burn the “Budapest Memorandum,” he said, referring to the 1994 agreement between the United States, Russia and Britain “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” The Ukrainian leader has called on the U.S.-led alliance, which was founded after World War II to counter the Soviet Union, to impose a no-fly zone over the country. Earlier Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the Russian invasion of Ukraine “horrific,” but said that the alliance’s core task was to keep its 30 nations “safe.” “We have made it clear that we are not going to move into Ukraine, neither on the ground nor in Ukrainian airspace,” he said, adding that the only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into the country and shoot down Russian jets that don’t abide by it. Democratic and Republican lawmakers are eager to send billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as the government there desperately tries to repel a Russian invasion and secure the safety of more than 1 million refugees fleeing the war-torn nation. But with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army steadily advancing, members of Congress and U.S. national security officials are now discussing the challenges of assisting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government if the capital Kyiv falls and Moscow installs a puppet regime. It is a grim scenario that Biden administration officials are hesitant to acknowledge publicly — especially with Zelenskyy and his troops holding off the Russians longer than many expected — but it is one that is increasingly being debated in Washington. “One of the challenges that we’re going to face is where is going to be the seat of Ukrainian government, and is that going to have to relocate to Lviv or someplace west of the Dnieper River? Or is that going to have to relocate to some place outside of Ukraine?” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees. That count is just the reports that have been corroborated by the agency. It said that fighting has delayed reports and that many other reports are pending corroboration. Most of the casualties were from explosive weapons that affect wide areas, like artillery shelling, rockets and airstrikes, the U.N. human rights office said.
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