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How dangerous was Russia’s nuclear plant strike?
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was hit by Russian shelling early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears of a disaster that could affect all of central Europe for decades, like the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
Concerns faded after Ukrainian authorities announced that the fire had been extinguished, and while there was damage to the reactor compartment, the safety of the unit was not affected.
But even though the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is of a different design than Chernobyl and is protected from fire, nuclear safety experts and the International Atomic Energy Agency warn that waging war in and around such facilities presents extreme risks.
One major concern, raised by Ukraine’s state nuclear regulator, is that if fighting interrupts power supply to the nuclear plant, it would be forced to use less-reliable diesel generators to provide emergency power to operating cooling systems. A failure of those systems could lead to a disaster similar to that of Japan’s Fukushima plant, when a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed cooling systems, triggering meltdowns in three reactors.
The consequence of that, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would be widespread and dire.
“If there is an explosion, that’s the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe,” he said in an emotional speech in the middle of the night, calling on nations to pressure Russia’s leadership to end the fighting near the plant.
“Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian troops. Do not allow the death of Europe from a catastrophe at a nuclear power station.”
WHAT HAPPENED?
After taking the strategic port city of Kherson, Russian forces moved into the territory near Zaporizhzhia and attacked the nearby city of Enerhodar to open a route to the plant late Thursday.
It was not immediately clear how the power plant was hit, but Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov said a Russian military column had been seen heading toward the nuclear facility and that loud shots were heard in the city.
Later Friday, Ukrainian authorities said Russia had taken over the nuclear plant.
Plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that early Friday morning, shells fell directly on the facility and set fire to one of its six reactors.
Read: Fire out at Ukraine's key nuclear plant amid Russian attacks
Initially, firefighters were not able to get near the flames because they were being shot at, Tuz said.
After speaking with Ukrainian authorities on Friday, Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said a building next to the reactors was hit and not a reactor itself.
“All of the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all and there has been no release of radioactive material,” he said.
“However, as you can imagine, the operator and the regulator have been telling us that the situation naturally continues to be extremely tense and challenging.”
Earlier this week, Grossi already had warned that the IAEA was “gravely concerned” with Russian forces conducting military operations so close nearby.
“It is of critical importance that the armed conflict and activities on the ground around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and any other of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities in no way interrupts or endangers the facilities or the people working at and around them,” he said.
WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED?
The reactor that was hit was offline, but still contains highly radioactive nuclear fuel. Four of the other six reactors have now been taken offline, leaving only one in operation.
The reactors at the plant have thick concrete containment domes, which would have protected them from external fire from tanks and artillery, said Jon Wolfsthal, who served during the Obama administration as the senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council.
At the same time, a fire at a nuclear power plant is never a good thing, he said.
“We don’t want our nuclear power plants to come under assault, to be on fire, and to not have first responders be able to access them,” he said.
Another danger at nuclear facilities are the pools where spent fuel rods are kept to be cooled, which are more vulnerable to shelling and which could cause the release of radioactive material.
Read: Nuke plant attack: Johnson to seek UN Security Council meeting
Perhaps the biggest issue, however, is the plant’s power supply, said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has studied both the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, raising a concern also voiced by Wolfsthal and others.
The loss of off-site power could force the plant to rely on emergency diesel generators, which are highly unreliable and could fail or run out of fuel, causing a station blackout that would stop the water circulation needed to cool the spent fuel pool, he said.
“That is my big — biggest concern,” he said.
David Fletcher, a University of Sydney professor in its School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who previously worked at UK Atomic Energy, noted that even shutting down the reactors would not help if the cooling system failed in such a way.
“The real concern is not a catastrophic explosion as happened at Chernobyl but damage to the cooling system which is required even when the reactor is shut down,” he said in a statement. “It was this type of damage that led to the Fukushima accident.”
WHAT CONCERNS REMAIN?
Ukraine is heavily reliant on nuclear energy, with 15 reactors at four stations that provide about half the country’s electricity.
In the wake of the attack on Zaporizhzhia, U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and others called for an immediate end to the fighting there.
Following a conversation with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, IAEA Director Grossi appealed to all parties to “refrain from actions” that could put Ukraine’s nuclear power plants in danger.
Shmyhal called on western nations to close the skies over the country’s nuclear plants.
“It is a question of the security of the whole world!” he said in a statement.
Ukraine is also home to the former Chernobyl nuclear plant, where radioactivity is still leaking, which was taken by Russian forces in the opening of the invasion after a fierce battle with the Ukrainian national guards protecting the decommissioned facility.
Read: Kyiv shrines, memorials with powerful symbolic value at risk
In an appeal to the IAEA for help earlier this week, Ukrainian officials said that Chernobyl staff have been held by the Russian military without rotation and are exhausted.
Grossi earlier this week appealed to Russia to let the Chernobyl staff “do their job safely and effectively.”
During fighting on the weekend, Russian fire also hit a radioactive waste disposal facility in Kyiv and a similar facility in Kharkiv.
Both contained low-level waste such as those produced through medical use, and no radioactive release has been reported, but Grossi said the incidents should serve as a warning.
“The two incidents highlight the risk that facilities with radioactive material may suffer damage during the armed conflict, with potentially severe consequences,” he said.
James Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the simple key to keeping the facilities safe was to immediately end any military operations around them.
“Under normal circumstances, the likelihood of a reactor losing power and of the emergency diesel generators being damaged and of not being repaired adequately quickly is very, very small,” Acton said.
“But in a war, all of these different failures that would have to happen for a reactor to become damaged and meltdown — the likelihood of all of those happening becomes much more likely than it does in peacetime.”
Mitsuru Fukuda, a professor at Nihon University in Tokyo and expert on crisis management and security, said the Zaporizhzhia attack raises broader questions for all countries.
“Many of us did not expect a respected country’s military would take such an outrageous step,” he said. ”Now that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has done it, not only Ukraine but the international community, including Japan, should reevaluate the risk of having nuclear plants as potential wartime targets.”
Suicide bombing kills 56 at Shiite mosque in Pakistan
A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said.
No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban — a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan — have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with neighboring Afghanistan.
According to the spokesman at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris.
Read: Fire out at Ukraine's key nuclear plant amid Russian attacks
Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawar’s old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest.
Local police official Waheed Khan said the explosion occurred as worshippers had gathered in the Kucha Risaldar Mosque for Friday prayers. There are fears the death toll will rise further, he added.
Ambulances rushed through congested narrow streets carrying the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly.
Shayan Haider, a witness, had been preparing to enter the mosque when a powerful explosion threw him to the ground. “I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere,” he said.
At the Lady Reading Hospital Emergency department, there was chaos as doctors struggled to move the many wounded into operating theaters. Hundreds of relatives gathered outside the emergency department, many of them wailing and beating their chests, pleading for information about their loved ones.
10 killed in blast in eastern India
As many as 10 people were killed and nine others injured in a powerful explosion that ripped through a three-storey building in the eastern Indian state of Bihar in the small hours of Friday.
Officials said the explosion occurred inside a house in the town of Bhagalpur, 250 kms from state capital Patna, reducing it to rubble. Two adjacent houses also collapsed like a pack of cards in the impact.
Bhagalpur district magistrate Subrat Kumar Sen said that the powerful blast occurred in the house of a middle-aged person, named Mahendra Mandal, who had been running an illegal fireworks factory on his premises.
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"The 10 bodies recovered so far were badly disfigured, and the administration is yet to confirm the identities of the deceased. Nine survivors have been rushed to a hospital," he told the local media.
Local TV channels aired footage of rescue operations being carried out by police and residents of the area in Kajbalichak.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences over the loss of lives in Bhagalpur. He also spoke with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and took stock of the rescue operations this morning.
"A probe has been ordered into the explosion," Sen said.
Fire out at key Ukraine nuclear plant, no radiation released
No radiation was released from a Russian attack at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the facility, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said Friday, as Russian forces pressed their campaign to cripple the country despite global condemnation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Friday the building hit by a Russian “projectile” at the Zaporizhzhia plant was “not part of the reactor” but instead a training center at the plant.
Nuclear officials from Sweden to China said no radiation spikes had been reported, as did Grossi. Ukrainian officials have said Russian troops took control of the overall site, but the plant’s staff were continuing to ensure its operations. Grossi said the Ukrainians were in control of the reactor.
In the frenzied initial aftermath when the risk of a radiation release was not clear, the attack caused worldwide concern — and evoked memories of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraine’s Chernobyl.
Facing worldwide indignation over the attack, Russia sought to deflect blame. Without producing evidence, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov blamed arson rather than artillery fire. He claimed a Ukrainian “sabotage group” had occupied the training building at the plant, fired on a Russian patrol and set fire to the building as they left.
There had been conflicting reports earlier over which part of the Zaporizhzhia facility had been affected in the attack, with an official saying at one point that shells fell directly on the facility and set fire to a reactor not in operation as well as a training building. Grossi later said that the fire was in the training center.
The confusion itself underscored the dangers of active fighting near a nuclear power plant. It was the second time since the invasion began just over a week ago that concerns about a nuclear accident or a release of radiation materialized, following a battle at Chernobyl.
Grossi said only one reactor of six at Zaporizhzhia is currently operating, at about 60% capacity, and that two people at the site were injured in the fire. Ukraine’s state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded.
The plant fire came as the Russian military advanced on a strategic city on the Dnieper River near where the facility is located, and gained ground in their bid to cut the country off from the sea. That move would deal a severe blow to Ukraine’s economy and could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.
With the invasion in its second week, another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid to the country, overturned by a war that has sent more than 1 million fleeing over the border and countless others sheltering underground. A handful cities are without heat and at least one is struggling to get food and water.
Nuke plant attack: Johnson to seek UN Security Council meeting
The office of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will seek an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting after Russian troops in Ukraine attacked a nuclear power plant and sparked a fire.
Johnson's office says he spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the early hours of the morning. He says Britain will raise the issue immediately with Russia and close partners.
Johnson's office says he and Zelenskyy agree Russia must immediately cease attacking and allow emergency services unfettered access to the plant. The two agree a ceasefire is essential.
Also read: Atomic watchdog: No radiation change at Ukrainian plant
“The Prime Minister said the reckless actions of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe,” Johnson's office said in a statement. “He said (the United Kingdom) would do everything it could to ensure the situation did not deteriorate further.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he also spoke with Zelenskyy about the attacks on the power plant.
“These unacceptable attacks by Russia must cease immediately,” he said on Twitter.
Also read: Russia shells Europe's largest nuclear plant, starting fire
Another Indian student shot at in Ukraine: Minister
Two days after an Indian student died in Russian shelling in Ukraine, another student was shot at in the war-torn country's capital Kyiv on Thursday, a senior Minister has said.
"We heard reports that a student leaving Kyiv was shot. He was taken back into Kyiv and immediately taken to hospital," Indian Minister General VK Singh (retired) told the media at Poland's Rzeszow airport.
General Singh is one of the four Ministers sent by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Ukraine's neighbouring countries to help evacuate not only distressed Indians but also stranded foreign nationals.
Also read: Indian students in Ukraine in fear as Russian invasion grows
On March 1, a 21-year-old Indian medical student was killed in Russian shelling when he had stepped out to buy food in the city of Kharkiv.
"With profound sorrow, we confirm that an Indian student lost his life in shelling in Kharkiv this morning," Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted on Tuesday.
A day later, Russia vowed to investigate the death of Naveen Shekarappa Gyanagoudar, the Indian medical student.
"Russia will do everything it possibly can to ensure the safety of Indian citizens in the areas of intense conflict... and a proper investigation of this unfortunate incident," Russian Ambassador-designate Denis Alipov had told the local media in Delhi.
Also read: One Indian student dead in shelling in Ukraine, says govt
Last week, Prime Minister Modi urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to immediately halt military action against Ukraine, underscoring the need for a diplomatic solution to the standoff.
This was after Ukraine's envoy in Delhi sought Modi's intervention in ending the Russian offensive.
US hits Putin allies, press secretary with new sanctions
The Biden administration ordered new sanctions blocking Russian business oligarchs and others in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle on Thursday in response to Russian forces' fierce pummeling of Ukraine.
President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke late Thursday as Russian forces shelled Europe’s largest nuclear plant, in the eastern Ukraine city of Enerhodar. The assault sparked a fire and raised fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.
The White House said Biden joined Zelenskyy in urging Russia to “cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.”
Those targeted by the new U.S. sanctions include Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, and Alisher Burhanovich Usmanov, one of Russia’s wealthiest individuals and a close ally of Putin. The U.S. State Department also announced it was imposing visa bans on 19 Russian oligarchs and dozens of their family members and close associates.
"The goal was to maximize impact on Putin and Russia and minimize the harm on us and our allies and friends around the world,” Biden said as he noted the new sanctions at the start of a meeting with his Cabinet and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Also read: Russia takes aim at urban areas; Biden vows Putin will 'pay'
The White House said the oligarchs and dozens of their family members will be cut off from the U.S. financial system. Their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use.
The White House described Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, as ”a top purveyor of Putin’s propaganda.”
The property of Usmanov and the others will be blocked from use in the United States and by Americans. His assets include his superyacht, one of the world’s largest, and his private jet, one of Russia’s largest privately owned aircraft.
The Usmanov superyacht, known as Dilbar, is named after Usmanov’s mother and has an estimated worth of between $600 million and $735 million, according to Treasury. Dilbar has two helipads and one of the world’s largest indoor pools ever installed on a yacht, and costs about $60 million per year to operate. The jet targeted is believed to have cost between $350 million and $500 million and was previously leased out for use by Uzbekistan’s president.
Others targeted Thursday include Nikolai Tokarev, a Transneft oil executive; Arkady Rotenberg, co-owner of the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia; Sergei Chemezov, a former KGB agent who has long been close to Putin; Igor Shuvalov, a former first deputy prime minister and chairman of State Development Corp.; and Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian businessman with close ties to Putin.
Also read: Biden joins allies, bans Russian planes from US airspace
Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin's chef,” was among those charged in 2018 by the U.S. government as being part of a wide-ranging effort to sway political opinion in America during the 2016 presidential election.
According to the indictment then, Prigozhin and his companies provided significant funding to the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based group accused of using bogus social media postings and advertisements fraudulently purchased in the name of Americans to influence the White House race.
Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said Thursday that the Biden administration would continue to target Russian elites as it builds sanctions against the country. He said elites are already "attempting to get their money out of Russia, because the Russian economy is shrinking.”
“We’re going to make it hard for them to use the assets going forward," Adeyemo said at an event hosted by The Washington Post. He added, “Our goal then is to find that money and to freeze that money and to seize it.”
The Biden administration has been unveiling new sanctions targeting Russian individuals and entities daily since the start of last week's invasion, with officials saying they want to make certain Putin's decision to attack Ukraine will come with enormous cost to Russia's economy.
A notable aspect of the latest sanctions is the extent to which the U.S. penalized the family members of oligarchs and those closest to Putin. Recently passed anti-money-laundering legislation passed by Congress has helped Treasury unveil and target such people.
For example, the oil executive Tokarev’s family members — including his wife, Galina Tokareva, and daughter, Maiya Tokareva — have benefited from his proximity to Putin and Russian government and were hit by the sanctions. Maiya Tokareva’s real estate empire has been valued at more than $50 million in Moscow, according to Treasury.
Russian elites that have yet to be targeted by the U.S. or other Western countries have taken notice of the sanctions.
Faced with the threat of financial sanctions targeting Russians, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich announced Wednesday he is trying to sell the Premier League soccer club that became a trophy-winning machine thanks to his lavish investment. Abramovich made his fortune in oil and aluminum during the chaotic years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Biden had thus far been reluctant to hit the Russia energy sector with sanctions out of concern that it would hurt the U.S. and its allies as well as the Russians.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “We don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy.”
Atomic watchdog: No radiation change at Ukrainian plant
The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Twitter that it's been informed by Ukraine’s nuclear regulator that “there has been no change reported in radiation levels” at a nuclear power station shelled by Russian troops.
Also read: Russia shells Europe's largest nuclear plant, starting fire
The agency said its Director General Mariano Grossi was in touch with Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Schmygal and the Ukrainian regulator and operator about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
Grossi “appeals for halt of use of force and warns of severe danger if reactors hit,” the IAEA said in another tweet.
An official in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, not authorized to speak publicly and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the reactors have not yet been damaged and radiation levels are normal.
Also read: ICC prosecutor launches Ukraine war crimes investigation
Russia shells Europe's largest nuclear plant, starting fire
Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.
The assault on the eastern city of Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant came as the invasion entered its second week with Russian forces gaining ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea. Elsewhere, another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.
Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the facility and had set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.
Firefighters cannot get near the flames because they are being shot at, he said, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted a plea to the Russians to stop the assault and allow fire teams inside.
“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Tuz said in a video statement. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.”
Also read: Norway, Germany provide missiles to Ukraine
The attack renewed fears that the invasion could result in damage to one of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors and trigger another emergency like the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world’s worst nuclear disaster, which happened about 110 kilometers (65 miles) north of the capital.
The American Nuclear Society condemned the attack but said the latest radiation levels remained within natural background levels.
“The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country,” the group said in a statement from President Steven Nesbit and Executive Director and CEO Craig Piercy.
The plant’s reactor is a different type than the one used at Chernobyl, and there should be little risk if the containment vessel is not damaged and outside power can be restored, said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a former senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council and former special adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
“Everyone needs to take a step back and not jump to conclusions,” Wolfsthal, now a senior adviser at Global Zero, said on Twitter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was in contact with authorities in Ukraine. The agency's director general, Mariano Grossi, urged military forces to refrain from violence near the plant.
Also read: UN Assembly votes to demand that Russia stop war in Ukraine
The mayor of Enerhodar said earlier that Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the city’s outskirts. Video showed flames and black smoke rising above the city of more than 50,000, with people streaming past wrecked cars, just a day after the U.N. atomic watchdog agency expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors.
The Ukrainian state atomic energy company reported that a Russian military column was heading toward the nuclear plant. Loud shots and rocket fire were heard late Thursday.
“Many young men in athletic clothes and armed with Kalashnikovs have come into the city. They are breaking down doors and trying to get into the apartments of local residents,” the statement from Energoatom said.
Later, a live streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the Zaporizhzhia plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the facility’s parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted.
There were then what appeared to be bright muzzle flashes from vehicles, followed by nearly simultaneous explosions in the surrounding buildings. Smoke then rose into the frame and drifted away.
While the huge Russian armored column threatening Kyiv appeared bogged down outside the capital, Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the country's nuclear plants as fighting intensified. "It is a question of the security of the whole world!” he said in a statement.
The U.S. and NATO allies have ruled out creating a no-fly zone since the move would pit Russian and Western military forces against each other.
The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.
Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service, officials said. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.
Associated Press video from the port city shows the assault lighting up the darkening sky above largely deserted streets and medical teams treating civilians, including one inside a clinic who appeared to be a child. Doctors were unable to save the person.
Severing Ukraine's access to the Black and Azov seas would deal a crippling blow to its economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor to Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014.
Overall, the outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainians have put up stiff resistance, staving off the swift victory that Russia appeared to have expected. But a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia’s seizure of Crimea gave it a logistical advantage in that part of the country, with shorter supply lines that smoothed the offensive there.
Ukrainian leaders called on the people to defend their homeland by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking enemy columns from the rear. In recent days, authorities have issued weapons to civilians and taught them how to make Molotov cocktails.
“Total resistance. ... This is our Ukrainian trump card, and this is what we can do best in the world,” Oleksiy Arestovich, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during World War II.
The second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was held in neighboring Belarus. But the two sides appeared far apart going into the meeting, and Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin's demand for its “demilitarization" and declare itself neutral, renouncing its bid to join NATO.
Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron he was determined to press on with his attack "until the end,” according to Macron's office.
The two sides said that they tentatively agreed to allow cease-fires in areas designated safe corridors, and that they would seek to work out the necessary details quickly. A Zelenskyy adviser also said a third round of talks will be held early next week.
Despite a profusion of evidence of civilian casualties and destruction of property by the Russian military, Putin decried what he called an “anti-Russian disinformation campaign” and insisted that Moscow uses “only precision weapons to exclusively destroy military infrastructure.”
Putin claimed that the Russian military had already offered safe corridors for civilians to flee, but he asserted without evidence that Ukrainian “neo-Nazis" were preventing people from leaving and were using them as human shields.
He also hailed Russian soldiers as heroes in a video call with members of Russia's Security Council, and ordered additional payments to families of men killed or wounded.
A top Russian officer, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, commander of an airborne division, was killed in the fighting earlier this week, an officers organization in Russia reported.
The Pentagon set up a direct communication link to Russia's Ministry of Defense earlier this week to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation sparking conflict between Moscow and Washington, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the link had not been announced.
The fighting has sent more than 1 million people fleeing Ukraine, according to the U.N., which fears those refugee numbers could skyrocket.
The immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles still appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in days, amid fuel and food shortages, according to U.S. authorities.
Ukrainian delegation arrives for talks with Russia again
The Ukrainian delegation has arrived by helicopters to the venue of talks with Russia in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, TASS reports from the site.
Earlier on Thursday, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said the talks would be held in the Brest Region of Belarus, as planned. They were expected to kick off at 15:00 Moscow time.
Read: Norway, Germany provide missiles to Ukraine
On February 28, the first round of Russian-Ukrainian talks took place in the Gomel region, lasting five hours. The Russian delegation was led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who said that the Russian delegation was ready to speak with the Ukrainian side for as long as it may take to reach agreements.