Russia strikes Kharkiv ahead of Erdogan, UN chief meeting with Zelenskyy

KYIV, UKRAINE: Russian strikes battered the northeast Ukraine area of Kharkiv Thursday, killing at the least 5 individuals, hours forward of the primary face-to-face assembly for the reason that begin of the warfare between the Turkish and Ukrainian leaders.
Moscow in the meantime denied it had deployed any heavy weapons on the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant in southern Ukraine the place a latest escalation in preventing has elevated fears of a nuclear catastrophe.
The top of the Kharkiv area Oleg Synegubov mentioned Moscow’s forces had launched eight missiles from Russian territory at round 0430 native time (0130 GMT) placing throughout the town.
“Three individuals died, together with a toddler. Eight individuals, together with two youngsters, had been rescued,” the emergency companies mentioned.
Synegubov posted photos from the scene of 1 strike exhibiting the smouldering stays of a number of burnt out buildings and twisted wreckage of destroyed autos close by.
In separate strikes in town of Krasnograd south west of Kharkiv, bombardments that broken residential buildings left two useless and two extra injured, he mentioned.
“Kharkiv. 175 days of horror. Each day terror, missile strikes on residential areas and civilians,” a senior presidential aide, Mykhaylo Podolyak, wrote on social media.
The strikes within the war-scarred east of the nation come a day after bombardments killed at the least seven within the metropolis and because the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UN chief Antonio Guterres had been convening within the western metropolis of Lviv.
The 2 had been key brokers of a deal final month with Moscow and Kyiv permitting the resumption of grain exports from Ukraine after Russia’s invasion blocked important international provides.
A spokesman for Guterres mentioned that the UN chief, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Erdogan will focus on the grain deal, in addition to “the necessity for a political answer to this battle”.
He added that he had “little question that the difficulty of the nuclear energy plant” can be raised.
In his common nightly handle on Wednesday, Zelenskyy mentioned he and Guterres would “work to get the required outcomes for Ukraine”.
The UN chief is slated to journey on Friday to Odessa, certainly one of three ports concerned within the grain exports deal — hammered out in July below the aegis of the UN with Ankara’s mediation.
He’ll then head to Turkey to go to the Joint Coordination Centre, the physique tasked with overseeing the accord.
In keeping with the UN, the primary half of August noticed 21 freighters authorised to sail below the deal carrying greater than 563,000 tonnes of agricultural merchandise, together with greater than 451,000 tonnes of corn.
The primary wartime cargo of UN meals help for Africa reached the Bosphorus Strait on Wednesday carrying 23,000 tonnes of wheat.
Russia’s defence ministry in the meantime mentioned Thursday its forces had not deployed heavy weapons on the Zaporizhzhia plant, accusing Kyiv of making ready a “provocation” on the station.
“Russian troops haven’t any heavy weapons both on the territory of the station or in areas round it. There are solely guard models,” the ministry mentioned in an announcement.
Zelenskyy touched on the Zaporizhzhia plant in his handle on Wednesday, saying Ukrainian diplomats and scientists had been in “fixed contact” with the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company (IAEA) with the objective of sending a mission by the watchdog to the occupied nuclear facility.
“The Russian military should withdraw from the territory of the nuclear energy plant and all neighbouring areas, and take away its army tools from the plant,” he added. “This should occur with none situations and as quickly as attainable.”
Earlier Wednesday, Nato secretary common Jens Stoltenberg mentioned Russia’s seizure of the plant “poses a severe menace to the security and the safety of this facility (and) raises the dangers of a nuclear accident or incident”.
Additionally calling for a Russian withdrawal and inspections by the IAEA, Stoltenberg accused Moscow of utilizing “the bottom across the nuclear energy plant as a staging space, as a platform, to launch artillery assaults on Ukrainian forces, and that is reckless”.
Russian forces took the Zaporizhzhia plant, situated in southern Ukraine, in March shortly after invading.
It’s the largest in Europe, and the uncertainty surrounding it has fuelled fears of a nuclear accident to rival Chernobyl in 1986.
Russia and Ukraine have accused one another of shelling the Zaporizhzhia set up.