Ukraine regains some territory; Nuclear plant in danger

Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian forces on Friday declared a new success in their counter-offensive against Russian forces in the east of the country, taking control of a large village and pushing towards an important transportation junction. The top US diplomat and NATO chief noted the progress, but warned that the war could drag on for months.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised the military for its gains in the east, saying in a nightly video address that Ukrainian forces have retaken more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region since the counter-offensive began there this week.

“We are gradually taking control of more settlements, returning the Ukrainian flag and protecting our people.” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian military said it also launched new attacks on Russian pontoon bridges used to transport supplies across the Dnieper River to Kherson, one of the largest Russian-occupied cities, and the nearby region. The Army’s Southern Command said Ukrainian missile and artillery strikes had left all regular bridges across the river unusable.

Concern about Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which was operating in emergency mode on Friday for the fifth consecutive day, increased due to the war. This prompted the head of the United Nations Atomic Watchdog to call for the establishment of an immediate safety zone around the plant to prevent a nuclear accident.

The six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant came under the control of Russian forces early in the war but is operated by Ukrainian personnel. The station and its surroundings were frequently bombed, which Russia and Ukraine blamed on each other. The last power line connecting the station to the Ukrainian power grid was cut on Monday, leaving the station without an external source of electricity. It receives power for its safety systems from the only reactor – out of a total of six – that is still operating.

In other developments, the Ukrainian military said it had captured the village of Volokhiv Yar in the Kharkiv region, and was aiming to advance toward the strategically valuable town of Kobyansk, which would cut off Russian forces from major supply routes.

Pro-Russian authorities in the Kobyansk region announced that civilians had been evacuated towards the Russian-controlled Luhansk region.

“The initial indications are positive and we see Ukraine making real progress that can be demonstrated in a measured way,” US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in Brussels, a day after visiting Kyiv.

“But this is likely to continue for a long period of time,” he said. “There are a huge number of Russian troops in Ukraine, and unfortunately, tragically and appallingly, President (Vladimir) Putin has shown that he will throw a lot of people into this at great cost to Russia.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who met Blinken, said the war was “entering a critical phase.”

The gains are “modest and are only the first successes of the Ukrainian army’s counterattack, but they are significant in terms of seizing the military initiative and raising the spirit of Ukrainian soldiers,” Mykola Sonhorovsky, a military analyst at the Razumkov Center in Kyiv, told The Associated Press.

Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, said on Friday that repairing external power lines at the Zaporizhzhia plant was impossible due to the bombing and that operating the plant in a so-called “island” situation had “risks of violating radiation and fire safety standards.”

“Only the withdrawal of the Russians from the plant and the creation of a security zone around it can normalize the situation in the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Only then will the world be able to exhale,” Petro Kotin, head of Energoatom, told Ukrainian television.

Earlier, Cotten told The Associated Press The plant’s only operating reactor can “completely shut down” at any moment, and as a result, the only power source will be a diesel generator.

There are 20 generators on site and diesel fuel for 10 days. After that, about 200 tons of diesel fuel will be needed per day for the generators, which he said was “impossible” to obtain during the occupation of the plant by Russian troops.

There is little prospect of re-establishing reliable off-site power lines to the plant, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Friday.

“This is an unsustainable and increasingly precarious situation,” Grossi said, calling for an “immediate cessation of all bombing operations in the entire region” and the establishment of a nuclear safety zone and security protection.

“This is the only way to ensure that we do not have a nuclear accident,” he said.

Fighting continued on Friday in other parts of Ukraine.

The governor of the Sumy region, Dmytro Chivitsky, said that Russian planes bombed the hospital in the town of Velika Pisarevka on the border with Russia. He said the building was destroyed and there were an unknown number of casualties.

In the Donetsk region in the east – one of two Russia declared sovereign states at the start of the war – eight people have been killed in Bakhmut over the past day and the city has no water and electricity for the fourth in a row. Today, said Governor Pavlo Kirilenko.

Four people were killed in the bombing of the Kharkiv region, two of them in the city of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, according to the governor of Oleh Sinihopov. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the bombing of the city continued on Friday afternoon, injuring 10 people, including three children.

Ukraine claimed this week that it has regained control of more than 20 settlements in the Kharkiv region, including the small town of Balaklya. Social media posts showed residents of Balaklia crying and smiling as they hugged Ukrainian soldiers.

On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the claims of Balaklia’s recovery, redirecting all those questions to the Russian Defense Ministry.

But Vitaly Ganchev, the Russian official in the Kharkiv region, stressed on Friday that “Palaklia, in fact, is not under our control.” Ganchev said “hard battles” were continuing in the city.

Helicopters and fighter planes crashed over the rolling plains of the Donetsk region, the planes are heading towards Izyum, near where Ukrainian forces are launching a counterattack in the Kharkiv region. The planes fired flares and black smoke rose from afar.

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Writers Elena Pekatoros of Donetsk region, Ukraine, and Frank Jordan of Berlin contributed to this report for The Associated Press.

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