Ukrainian officials reported Russian missile strikes Thursday, March 9 in multiple parts of the country that killed at least six people.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down 34 of 81 missiles that Russia fired, and that it downed four Iranian-made drones used by Russian forces.
“The occupiers can only terrorize civilians,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on Telegram. “That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done.”
The governor of the western Lviv region said five people were killed there when a missile hit a residential area.
In the Dnipropetrovsk, officials said the Russian attacks killed one person and injured two others.
The governor of the Odesa region, Maksym Marchenko, said Russian missiles struck energy infrastructure and that power cuts were in place. Marchenko also said the strikes damaged residential buildings, but that no casualties had been reported.
In Kharkiv, the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov, said 15 Russian strikes hit the city and surrounding region, with targets that included critical infrastructure facilities.
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, was also struck.
Nuclear power fears
Thursday’s attack knocked out the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The plant’s operator, Energoatom, said diesel generators were being used to run the plant and that there was enough fuel available to continue for 10 days.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi called for urgent action, noting the Zaporizhzhia plant’s power supply had been cut for a sixth time since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.
“I am astonished by the complacency – what are we doing to prevent this happening? We are the IAEA, we are meant to care about nuclear safety,” Grossi said. “Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out.”
Zaporizhzhia plant is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and repeated attacks near the site have sparked fears of a disaster.
US outreach
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy invited the top U.S. House lawmaker to visit Kyiv to see “what’s happening here” in an interview broadcast Wednesday on TV news channel CNN.
“Mr. [Kevin] McCarthy, he has to come here to see how we work, what’s happening here, what war caused us, which people are fighting now, who are fighting now. And then after that, make your assumptions,” Zelenskyy told the news outlet through an interpreter.
