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Artillery shells rained down on a city close to Europe’s biggest nuclear plant overnight and Russian missiles hit targets near Odesa, a Ukrainian Black Sea port and grain export hub, as the war headed for its six-month milestone on Wednesday.
Aug. 24 will also mark 31 years of Ukraine’s independence from Soviet rule and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly video address called for vigilance, saying Moscow could try “something particularly ugly.”
Russian authorities said on Sunday they were investigating a suspected car bomb attack outside Moscow that killed the daughter of Alexander Dugin, an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue who advocates Russia absorbing Ukraine.
While the investigators said they were considering “all versions” when it came to establishing who was responsible, the Russian Foreign Ministry speculated there could be a link to Ukraine, something a Zelenskiy adviser dismissed.
“Ukraine, of course, had nothing to do with this because we are not a criminal state, like the Russian Federation, and moreover we are not a terrorist state,” Mykhailo Podolyak said on Ukrainian television, suggesting the incident was “Karmic” payback for supporters of Moscow’s invasion.
As Ukraine prepared to mark its Independence Day embroiled in a war that has flattened towns and cities, killed thousands and forced millions to flee, military and regional officials reported more Russian strikes on targets in the east and south of the country.
Of particular concern was the shelling of Nikopol, a city lying across the Dnipro river from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear plant.
