Innocent victims: A neonatologist at the only hospital under Ukraine control at Donetsk region checking on a premature baby. Birth complications are on the rise due to the stress of war. — AP
KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians to be vigilant ahead of Wednesday’s celebrations to mark 31 years of independence from Soviet rule, as fresh blasts hit Crimea and a missile wounded 12 civilians near a nuclear power plant.
Ukrainians must not allow Moscow to “spread despondency and fear” ahead of the events, which also come six months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
“We must all be aware that this week Russia could try to do something particularly ugly, something particularly vicious,” Zelenskyy said in nightly remarks on video.
Curfew in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, is to be extended for the entire day on Wednesday, said regional Governor Oleh Synehub. The curfew usually runs from 10pm to 6aam in the northeastern city, regularly hit by Russian shelling.
“Remain at home and take heed of warnings!” Synehub wrote to residents on the Telegram messaging app.
Zelenskyy in his speech also referred obliquely to a recent series of explosions in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory Russia annexed in 2014.
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attacks, but analysts have said at least some have been made possible by new equipment used by its forces.
“You can literally feel Crimea in the air this year, that the occupation there is only temporary and that Ukraine is coming back,” Zelenskyy said.
In the latest attack in Crimea, the Russian-appointed governor, who is not recognised by the West, said a drone had struck a building near the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet on Saturday morning.
Also on Saturday, a Russian missile hit a residential area of a southern Ukrainian town not far from a nuclear power station, wounding 14 civilians, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.
The strike at the Pivdennoukrainsk (South Ukraine) nuclear station and fresh shelling near the Zaporizhzhia station, Europe’s largest, revived fears of a nuclear accident, Ukrainian officials said.
Following the strike near the South Ukraine power station, Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv region, said on Telegram that four children were among the wounded.
Private homes and a five-storey apartment block were damaged in Voznesensk, 30km from the plant, Ukraine’s second-largest.
Updating a toll, authorities in the Ukrainian military’s south district said 14 civilians were wounded.
The attack on Voznesensk was “another act of Russian nuclear terrorism,” said state-run Energoatom, which manages Ukraine’s four nuclear energy generators.
“It is possible that this missile was aimed specifically at the plant, which the Russian military tried to seize back at the beginning of March,” it said in a statement.
Russia did not immediately respond to the accusation. — Reuters
