JAKARTA - Ukraine accused Russia of firing rockets from around the captured Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), killing at least 13 people and wounding 10, knowing it would be risky for Ukraine to return fire.
The Russian target of the Ukrainian town of Marhanets, Moscow said was one of the locations used to open fire on their troops at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which it seized in March.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops would respond to the shooting of Marhanets. The Ukrainian military said Russia also bombed several other areas in the Zaporizhzhia region, including the coal mining town of Vuhledar.
"Ukrainian armed forces, our intelligence and our law enforcement agencies will not leave today's Russian shooting in the Dnipropetrovsk region unanswered," President Zelensky said in a late-night video speech. , said that Russia launched the attack with impunity from Zaporizhzhia, knowing that Ukraine was at risk of resisting.
"The cowardly Russians couldn't do anything more, so they attacked the cities by hiding in the Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant," he said on social media.
The mayor of Nikopol, a Ukrainian-controlled town near Marhanets across the Dnipro River from the nuclear plant, said on Telegram that Russian shelling had hit a nearby area almost every night for the past week.
Ukraine says about 500 Russian troops with heavy vehicles and weapons are at the plant, where Ukrainian technicians continue to work.
Earlier, Ukraine's state nuclear power company had warned that containers with radioactive material might be at risk of being hit by fire, saying it was imperative that Kyiv retake the plant by winter. He accused Russia of wanting to connect the facility to its power grid.
Russia said its troops were behaving responsibly and ensuring the security of the complex.
Meanwhile, Valentyn Reznychenko, governor of central Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, said more than 20 buildings had been damaged in the town on the other side of the plant.
Images supplied by Ukrainian officials showed a rubble-strewn school corridor with windows smashed and a residential building pierced by rockets.
As for the governor of the Sumy region on the Russian border northwest of Kharkiv, Dmytro Zhyvytsky, said on Telegram that at least five communities faced Russian shelling and small arms fire.
Moscow pressed its campaign in various regions on Wednesday. The Ukrainian military reported Russian troops shelled about 28 towns in the northeast, southwest and south including the regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson. Ukraine's general staff said in an unverified statement that the Ukrainian counterattack forced Russian troops to retreat in most of their positions.
Russia has not commented on Ukraine's allegations of the attack on the Marhanets and Reuters was unable to independently verify the Kyiv version.
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