KYIV: Ukraine President Zelenskyy says a radiation disaster was narrowly avoided after the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was cut off from the country's power grid, according to Aljazeera report. Currently, work is underway to reconnect the plant to the country's energy grid.
On the day, the country celebrated its independence day (August 24), Russian troops attacked a railway station in eastern Ukraine killing 200 Ukrainian military personnel. The civilian death toll crossed 25, including small children.
The strike served as a brutally painful reminder that Russia is capable of employing military force that causes civilians to suffer the most and tests Ukraine's resilience after six months of grinding war.
In Geneva on Thursday, the U.N.’s human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, decried the time since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the neighbouring country as “unimaginably horrifying.” She called on Putin "to halt armed attacks against Ukraine.”
The lethal train station strike took place in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 people in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. It came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow might attempt “something particularly cruel” this week as Ukraine marked both its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union and the six-month point of Russia's invasion on August 24.
(With inputs from AP)