Extract from ABC News
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has acknowledged for the first time that counteroffensive operations are taking place across his country, as Ukraine's military reported intense fighting with Russian forces and its nuclear energy agency put the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant into a "cold shutdown" for safety reasons.
Key points:
- Ukraine has maintained strict operational silence regarding its counteroffensive up to this point
- Russia has intensified overnight missile strikes across the country over recent weeks
- The last reactor at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been shut down due to flooding and shelling near the plant
Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement on Saturday that "heavy battles" were ongoing across Ukraine, with 34 clashes over the previous day in the country's industrial east.
"We're trying...to conduct strikes on the enemy, we are counter-attacking. We've managed to advance up to 1,400 metres on various sections of the front," Ukrainian military spokesman Serhiy Cherevaty said.
The statement gave no details, but said Russian forces were "defending themselves" and launching air and artillery strikes in Ukraine's southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Speaking at a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday, Mr Zelenskyy shrugged when asked to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertion that Ukrainian forces had certainly begun their much-vaunted counteroffensive.
"Counteroffensive and defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine, but I will not say in detail what stage they are at," he said, listing Ukraine's top military brass by name.
"They are all in a positive mood. Pass that on to Putin."
Ukraine has said for months it plans to conduct a major counteroffensive to recapture tracts of land occupied by Russia in the south and east, but it is enforcing strict operational silence and has denied it has begun the main operation for now.
With scant independent reporting from the front lines, it has been difficult to assess the state of the fighting.
Britain's Ministry of Defence said Ukraine had conducted significant operations in several eastern and southern parts of the country over the past 48 hours, with Russian defences breached in places.
"In some areas, Ukrainian forces have likely made good progress and penetrated the first line of Russian defences. In others, Ukrainian progress has been slower," it said, characterising the Russian military's performance as mixed.
"Some [Russian] units are likely conducting credible manoeuvre defence operations, while others have pulled back in some disorder, amid increased reports of Russian casualties as they withdraw through their own minefields."
Russian drone, missile strikes kill four
Russia fired missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday, killing three civilians in the Black Sea city of Odesa and a 29-year-old in Kharkiv, as well as striking a military airfield in the central Poltava region, Kyiv authorities said.
The attacks were the latest in a spate of overnight strikes that Russia has intensified as Ukraine's counteroffensive ramps up.
Ukraine's air force said the attacks involved eight ground-launched missiles and 35 strike drones, 20 of which air defence units managed to intercept.
"As a result of the air fight, debris from one of the drones fell onto a high-rise apartment, causing a fire," the southern military command's spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said of the attack on Odesa.
Firefighters battled overnight to put out the fire in the 10-storey block in a residential area of the city.
Three people were killed, including a couple who lived on the eighth floor of the building and a man who had been outside at the time of the attack, authorities said.
At least 27 other people, including three children, were hurt, the emergency services said.
Russia also fired drones and ballistic and cruise missiles at the Poltava region, inflicting "some damage of infrastructure and equipment" at the Myrhorod military airfield, the regional governor said.
Ten drones attacked two areas of the Kharkiv region, which borders Russia and also backs onto the front line, wounding a 39-year-old man and killing one other person, Governor Oleh Synehubov said.
Ukraine also shot down two drones over the Dnipropetrovsk region where no damage was reported, its governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
Last nuclear reactor shut down
Ukraine's nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, said it had shut down the final reactor at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant due to the breach of the Kakhovka Dam further down the Dnipro River, which has sharply reduced water levels in a reservoir used to help cool the facility.
Five out of six reactors at the plant, which is Europe's largest and is currently occupied by Russian forces, were already in a state of cold shutdown, a process in which all control rods are inserted into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction.
With all nuclear reactions stopped, temperatures and pressure inside reactors gradually decline, reducing the required intensity of water cooling of the radioactive fuel.
Energoatom said in a statement late on Friday that there was "no direct threat" to the Zaporizhzhia plant due to the breach of the dam, however it had shut down the final reactor as a precaution and also because of shelling near the site that has damaged overhead lines connecting the plant to Ukraine's energy system.
Energoatom employees are still working at the power plant, although it remains controlled by the Russians.
The site's power units have not been operating since September last year.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to visit Ukraine in the coming days.
Flood impact continues after dam collapse
Nearly one-third of protected natural areas in the Kherson region could be obliterated by flooding following the breach of the Kakhovka Dam, the Ukrainian Environment Minister warned on Saturday.
In a Facebook post, Ruslan Strilets said the dam's collapse left one national park completely submerged, drained rivers and lakes in other protected areas, and could lead to groundwater rising in parts of the Dnipro delta occupied by Moscow, creating the risk of further flooding.
In the city of Kherson, whose outskirts were among the flood-hit areas, the average water level decreased by 31 centimetres during the night, but remained over 4.5 metres higher than usual, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on Saturday.
Mr Prokudin warned meteorologists were also predicting heavy rainfall in the area over the weekend, complicating rescue efforts.
The UN's humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said on Friday that an "extraordinary" 700,000 people were in need of drinking water.
Trudeau sends support to Ukraine as Macron warns Iran
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $CA500 million ($556 million) in new military aid for Ukraine.
Mr Trudeau paid his respects at a memorial to Ukrainian soldiers killed fighting pro-Russian forces since 2014, met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and addressed Ukraine's parliament.
"We will be there with (you) as much as it takes, for as long as it takes," he said, in footage of the talks released by Kyiv authorities, as he sat across from the Ukrainian leader.
Ukraine wants to join the NATO military alliance as fast as it can, but Mr Zelenskyy has recognised that cannot happen while the war with Russia is raging.
"Canada supports Ukraine to become a NATO member as soon as conditions allow for it. Ukraine and Canada look forward to addressing these issues at the NATO Summit in Vilnius in July 2023," said a joint declaration adopted after the talks.
Mr Trudeau was applauded at length as he spoke in parliament for 25 minutes, denouncing the Russian invasion and praising Ukraine's democratic development.
He said Ukraine's resistance was about "the future of us all. You are the tip of the spear that is determining the future of the 21st century."
Mr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was grateful to Canadians for their support and extended thanks.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi about the consequences of delivering drones to Russia, Macron's office said on Saturday.
In a phone call, Mr Macron urged Iran to "immediately cease" the support it is giving Russia in the war against Ukraine.
Mr Macron also expressed concerns about the trajectory of the Iranian nuclear programme, the statement said.
Britain, France, Germany, the United States and Ukraine say the supply of Iranian-made drones to Russia violates a 2015 UN Security Council resolution enshrining the Iran nuclear deal.
The White House said on Friday that Russia appeared to be deepening its defense cooperation with Iran and had received hundreds of one-way attack drones that it is using to strike Ukraine.
Nord Stream sabotage probe turns to clues inside Poland
German investigators are examining evidence suggesting a sabotage team used Poland as an operating base to damage the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The investigators have reconstructed the two-week voyage of the "Andromeda", a 15-metre yacht suspected of being involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, the newspaper said.
The Journal cited people familiar with the voyage as indicating the sabotage crew had placed deep-sea explosives on Nord Stream 1, before they set the vessel on a course towards Poland.
It added that Germany was trying to match DNA samples found on the vessel "to at least one Ukrainian soldier".
Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office and Poland's government spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters, but one senior Polish official suggested the newspaper report was the result of Russian propaganda.
"Information about Polish or Ukrainian clues in the destruction of NS1 and NS2, repeated in the media space, is consistently used by the Russian apparatus of influence to create the impression/presumption among the recipients that Warsaw and Kyiv were behind this incident," Stanislaw Zaryn, deputy to Poland's Minister Coordinator of Special Services, wrote on Twitter.
Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, each consisting of two pipes, were built by Russia's state-controlled Gazprom to pump 110 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year to Germany.
Both countries said the explosions were deliberate but have yet to determine who was responsible.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday told German media Ukraine did not attack the pipelines.
ABC/Wires
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