The IAEA’s head, Rafael Grossi, visited Kyiv, and Russian missiles struck the city of Zaporizhzhia, killing one
KYIV, Ukraine—The director of the United Nations’ nuclear agency visited Kyiv on Thursday as a part of his efforts to establish a safety zone around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which was seized by Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February.
Russia’s capture of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine in March and a resulting struggle with Ukraine along with shelling near the occupied facility have raised global concern about the risk of an atomic catastrophe.
Separately on Thursday, Russian missiles struck the center of the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one person, according to senior Ukrainian officials.
Russian officials on Wednesday said they declared the Zaporizhzhia plant property of the Russian state, further heightening concerns about safety at the facility, which is still run by Ukrainian engineers. Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to the Ukrainian president, called the decision “an attempted legal raid” by Russia and called for sanctions on Russia’s nuclear agency.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Wednesday that its experts at the plant had learned that engineers planned to restart one of its six reactors to produce steam and heat needed for the functioning of the plant. The plant shut down its last operating reactor in September after the facility was reconnected to Ukraine’s electrical grid, the agency said. Though the reactors have been shut down, the facility still needs electricity to cool spent fuel and to maintain ventilation units and other systems to avoid a nuclear safety mishap.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, said in a tweet on Wednesday that establishing a safety and security zone around the plant “is now more urgent than ever.” On Thursday, he said in a tweet that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made progress toward that goal, and he reiterated that the IAEA would continue to be guided by international law. He added that he would return to Kyiv soon.
Mr. Grossi, who made a dangerous trip across the front lines of the war to visit the plant in August, also plans to travel to Russia to discuss the status of the plant.
Russian authorities didn’t immediately comment on the attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Kirill Timoshenko, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said at least seven missiles struck the city’s center, hitting a series of apartment buildings. At least six people were also wounded in the strike, he said.
Verified video of the aftermath showed smoke rising from the ruins of a building that had been reduced to rubble, while firefighters searched for survivors. Mr. Timoshenko said on Thursday morning that a rescue operation had begun.
Ukrainian officials have said that Russia has escalated a campaign of attacks that have struck civilian targets in recent weeks at a time when Moscow’s forces are losing ground to a swift Ukrainian military offensive. Ukrainian leaders have accused Russia of deliberately attacking civilians, including in strikes far behind the front lines, in an attempt to put psychological pressure on Ukraine’s broader population.
Mr. Zelensky said on Wednesday night that his forces had recaptured three villages in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, accelerating his forces’ offensive aimed at rolling back Russia’s occupation in the east. In his nightly address to the nation, he said Ukrainian forces had seized the villages of Novovoskresenske, Novohryhorivka and Petropavlivka.
The villages were in one of the regions of Ukraine claimed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of Russia in a constitutional decree he signed on Wednesday. Mr. Putin formally declared four regions of Ukraine, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as Russian territory in a ceremony in Moscow on Sept. 30. Among foreign nations, only North Korea has accepted Russia’s rule over the territories.
Mr. Putin declared the annexation of a swath of Ukraine, mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists and threatened nuclear strikes last month in an attempt to escalate the war following weeks in which his grip on eastern Ukraine has receded due to Ukraine’s military offensive. Russia doesn’t fully control any of the four regions of Ukraine that it declared as part of its territory.
The Ukrainian offensive has appeared to gather momentum in recent days, with Ukraine’s forces seizing more territory with the help of hundreds of captured Russian tanks, armored vehicles and other military hardware.
The U.K.’s Ministry of Defense said on Thursday that Ukraine had begun “a new phase of offensive operations” in the Kherson region on Oct. 2, pushing the front line up about 12 miles.
“Russian forces have typically broken contact and withdrawn,” the ministry said.
In his address on Wednesday night, Mr. Zelensky also pushed back on Russia’s use of Iranian-made drones to strike deep inside Ukraine. A drone attack early on Wednesday hit a military headquarters about 50 miles south of Kyiv, causing severe damage to the facility and unsettling civilians living in the surrounding town. “It won’t help you anyway. You have already lost,” Mr. Zelensky said of the drone strikes.
Drones struck again in the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine early on Thursday, local authorities said. The Kharkiv region’s prosecutor’s office, which released photos of the aftermath, said the strikes took place at 2:30 a.m. and 4:40 a.m. local time, sparking a large fire that damaged an industrial area. Three people were injured in shelling overnight, the region’s governor said.
The Ukrainian military also said on Thursday that it shot down nine more Russian drones in southern Ukraine.
Russia introduced a new challenge for Ukraine’s air defenses when it began using the Iranian-made Shahed-136 delta-wing drones in recent weeks. The relatively small drones fly at a low altitude, making them difficult for air-defense systems to detect, military analysts say.
Russian aircraft also fired a missile at Ukraine from the airspace of neighboring Belarus early on Thursday, the first time they have done so since August, Ukrainian military officials said. Belarus has been Russia’s closest ally in the war on Ukraine, allowing its territory to be used in the initial invasion of Ukraine in February.
Russian forces also killed four civilians and wounded three others in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, according to the region’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko. The governor, who offered few other details, also said on Thursday that the bodies of 10 civilians had been found in the newly freed towns of Sviatohirsk and Lyman.
Also visiting Kyiv on Thursday, Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that Washington would provide Ukraine with $55 million to help the country prepare for winter, including repairs and equipment to help heat homes, hospitals, schools and businesses across the country.
Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com
