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Russian strikes kill five, damage nuclear storage facility: Kyiv / Photo: © Ukraine's Energoatom nuclear energy operator/AFP
Russian strikes kill five, damage nuclear storage facility: Kyiv
Russia fired waves of drones and other munitions at Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least five people and damaging a nuclear storage facility in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukrainian officials said.
Radiation levels at the facility remained within normal limits following the attack, although its fuel reception building was "partially destroyed", according to Ukraine's Energoatom nuclear energy operator.
Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months, as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war -- now in its fifth year -- remain stalled and sidetracked by the conflict in the Middle East.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Britain on Sunday for talks with his allies on how to pressure Russia to end the fighting, after Russia's Vladimir Putin rejected direct peace talks with his Ukrainian counterpart.
"A 'shahed' hit one of the buildings of the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility," Zelensky said in a post on X, referring to the Iranian-designed "Shahed" drones that Russia fires at Ukraine on a nightly basis.
"As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels. But there is certainly an increase in Russia's brazenness, which long ago went off the charts," he added.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was dispatching a team to inspect the damage, calling the incident "deeply concerning".
The facility is located in a remote area of forest around a dozen kilometres (seven miles) from the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and is designed to house spent nuclear fuel from Ukraine's three active nuclear plants.
- Deadly strikes -
Both sides accused each other of renewed attacks on civilians Sunday.
A Russian bombardment of a public transport stop in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region left at least two people dead, while a nearby drone strike killed a 56-year-old minibus driver, authorities said.
Separate Russian attacks on the central Dnipropetrovsk region killed two men, governor Oleksandr Ganzha posted on Telegram.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the Belgorod border region killed a woman and injured her husband, local authorities said.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia now occupies around a fifth of its neighbour: the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk -- collectively referred to as the Donbas -- and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
A. Lefebvre--BTZ
