Adam Schreck, The Associated Press Published Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, 1:08 p.m. EDT Last updated Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, 7:01 p.m. EDT
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A series of explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Saturday, sending billowing pillars of glowing smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.
There were no immediate reports of casualties
The blasts came hours after Russia focused attacks in its increasingly troubling invasion of Ukraine on areas it has illegally annexed, while the death toll from previous rocket strikes on residential buildings in the southern city of Zaporozhye rose to 14.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram that the early morning explosions were the result of rocket strikes in the city center. He said the blasts caused fires in one of the city’s medical facilities and a non-residential building.
In a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his handling of Europe’s worst armed conflict since World War II, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights organizations in his country and Ukraine, as well as to an activist jailed in Russia’s ally Belarus.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the commission’s chairman, said the honor went to “three outstanding defenders of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence”.
Putin this week illegally declared four regions of Ukraine as Russian territory, including the Zaporizhia region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, whose reactors were shut down last month.
Fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has alarmed the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, which on Friday doubled to four the number of inspectors monitoring the plant’s safeguards. An accident there could release 10 times more potentially deadly radiation than the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine 36 years ago, Ukrainian Environment Minister Ruslan Strilets said on Friday.
“The situation with the occupation, shelling and mining of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants by Russian troops is causing consequences that will have a global character,” Strylets told The Associated Press.
The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported new problems at the plant, saying on Twitter on Friday that external power had again been cut to one of the shutdown reactors at Zaporozhye, forcing the use of emergency standby diesel generators to operate of safety systems.
The city of Zaporizhia is 53 kilometers (33 mi) from the nuclear plant as the crow flies and remains under Ukrainian control. To assert Russia’s claims to the region, Russian forces bombarded the city with S-300 missiles on Thursday, with more attacks reported on Friday.
Ukrainian authorities said the death toll from Friday’s attacks on residential buildings had risen to 14, while 12 people injured in the bombing remained hospitalized.
Rockets also hit the city overnight, injuring one person, Zaporozhye Governor Alexander Starukh said. Russia also used Iranian Shahed-136 drones there for the first time and damaged two infrastructure facilities, he said.
As its military loses ground to a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and east, Russia has deployed single-use unmanned drones made in Iran that are cheaper and less sophisticated than missiles but can still damage ground targets.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Russia’s use of drones carrying explosives was unlikely to affect the course of the war.
“They have used a lot of drones against civilian targets in rear areas, probably hoping to generate non-linear effects through terror.” Such efforts are not successful,” analysts from the think tank wrote.
In other areas annexed by Moscow, Russia’s defense ministry said on Friday that its forces had repelled a Ukrainian advance near the town of Liman and retaken three villages elsewhere in eastern Donetsk region. The ministry also claimed that Russian forces prevented Ukrainian troops from advancing on several villages in the southern Kherson region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a late-night video address on Friday that this week alone his military had retaken 776 square kilometers (300 square miles) of territory in the east and 29 settlements, including six in the Luhansk region, that Putin had annexed. In total, Ukrainian forces have liberated 2,434 square kilometers (940 square miles) of land and 96 settlements since the counteroffensive began, he said.
In Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian troops shelled the city of Nikopol overnight, killing one person, wounding another and damaging buildings, gas pipelines and electrical systems, the governor said. Nikopol is located along the Dnieper River across from Russian-controlled territory near the nuclear power plant. The city has been shelled frequently for weeks.
The traces of Russia’s devastation and death from the areas where its troops have withdrawn became clearer on Friday. A report by Ukrainian First Deputy Interior Minister Yevgeny Yenin revealed that 530 civilian bodies had been found in Ukraine’s northeastern region since September 7.
Residents killed during the Russian occupation included 257 men, 225 women and 19 children, with 29 people unidentified, Jenin said. Most of the bodies were found in a previously discovered mass grave in the town of Izyum.
According to Jenin, the bodies found showed signs of gunshots, explosions and torture. Some people had ropes around their necks, hands tied behind their backs, bullet wounds to their knees and broken ribs.
Authorities have identified 22 torture sites in parts of the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces recently vacated, said Serhiy Bolvinov, a regional police official.
In the recently captured Liman, workers discovered 200 individual graves and a mass grave with an unknown number of victims, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko reported on Telegram. In Sviatohirsk, 24 kilometers (15 miles) from Lyman, 21 civilian bodies were reburied.
Meanwhile, Russian military equipment and weapons fall into Ukrainian hands. Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had captured at least 440 tanks and around 650 armored vehicles since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
“The failure of Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering highlights their poor level of training and low levels of combat discipline,” the British ministry said. “With Russian formations under severe strain in several sectors and increasingly demoralized troops, Russia is likely to continue to lose heavy armaments.”
Putin ordered a partial mobilization of Russian army reservists last month to bolster frontline manpower in Ukraine. Mistakes dogged conscription, however, and tens of thousands of men fled Russia unwilling to fight in Putin’s war.
This left Russia desperate for troop reinforcements. Ukraine’s military said on Friday that 500 ex-criminals had been mobilized to bolster Russian ranks in the eastern Donetsk region, where Ukrainian forces have retaken territory. Law enforcement officers command the new units, the military said.
Russia’s state news agency TASS reported on Friday that a court in the Russian city of Penza dismissed the first case against a Russian man called to serve but who refused. Lawyers for the 32-year-old man argued that the law under which he is charged only applies to those who evade military service, not those who are subject to partial mobilization.
In another sign of trouble, there were reports of poor training and few supplies for the new Russian troops. At least two Russian cities – St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod – announced on Friday that they were canceling their Russian New Year and Christmas celebrations and using that money to buy supplies for Russian troops.
Under increasing pressure from his own supporters as well as critics, Putin continued to reshuffle his military leadership, replacing the commander of Russia’s Eastern Military District.
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Associated Press reporters Hana Arkhirova in Kyiv and Vasilisa Stepanenko and Francisco Seco in Kharkiv contributed to this report.
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