Ukraine live briefing: Kyiv accuses Moscow of ‘radiation blackmail’ as IAEA director visits Zaporizhzhia region
Rafael Mariano Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on a visit to Ukraine, told reporters Tuesday that he remained hopeful a deal could be brokered to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest.
“We are making some adjustments on the proposals that we are putting on the table,” Grossi told Reuters. “I am confident that it might be possible to establish some form of protection.” The details of a potential deal have not been released.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian occupation of the plant was “the worst thing that could happen in the history” of European nuclear energy. Russia is using the facility for “radiation blackmail,” he said Monday. Russia claimed to annex the Zaporizhzhia region, in violation of international law, late last year, even though parts of the region including its capital remain under Ukrainian control.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
In war-ravaged Lyman, Ukrainians live underground months after liberation: Repeated shelling of a residential area in this eastern Ukrainian city has pushed its inhabitants underground, Alex Horton and Anastacia Galouchka report. Children attend online classes under electric lights. Adults watch small TVs for news updates of Ukraine’s military operations. Pets rummage around in small cages.
“Of course we’ve gotten used to it. It’s calmer for me to be in the basement,” one retired mail carrier, who now serves warm bowls of borscht and meat patties to residents underground, told The Washington Post. “I miss my children, and grandchildren,” she said, her gray eyes welling.
Robyn Dixon contributed to this report.
