The UN Secretary-General met Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. At least nine people were killed in new bomb attacks on the Ukrainian side on Tuesday.
As diplomatic meetings continue, civilian casualties mount. More than two months after the war began, UN officials arrived in Moscow to speak with the head of Russian diplomacy. The bomb attacks on Ukrainian soil claimed new victims on Tuesday. A review of the last 24 hours of war in Ukraine.
• New victims in bombings
According to local authorities, at least nine civilians died in bomb attacks by the Russian army in eastern and southern Ukraine on Tuesday.
Two Russian rockets hit the city of Zaporijjia in particular, killing at least one person and injuring one, according to the regional administration. Ukraine’s defense ministry said Tuesday the city was preparing for an attack by Russian forces from the coast. British intelligence services have also warned of a possible Russian attack in this city, which is a pick-up point for many Ukrainian civilians but also a site where the country’s largest nuclear power plant is located.
A third mass grave was also discovered near Mariupol, the martyr city of the conflict that lasted more than two months. Information confirmed by the mayor of the port city, Vadym Boytchenko, during a statement on a Ukrainian TV channel.
Another event of the day, this time symbolic: Kyiv City Hall has started demolition of a Soviet-era historical monument celebrating the friendship between Ukraine and Russia.
• The IAEA takes stock of the situation in Chernobyl
The level of radioactivity at the site of Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant is “in the normal range,” said the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, on Tuesday, who visited the 36-year-old site day after day in what was the worst civilian nuclear disaster in the world Story.
“The level of radioactivity is, I would say, normal,” he told reporters at the site, which was occupied by the Russian military between February 24 and March 31. “Levels (of radioactivity) increased at certain times when the Russians brought heavy equipment into the area and when they left it,” Grossi told reporters, without giving specific figures, assuring that experts from the UN agency were assessing the situation “daily” monitored “.
Located 150 kilometers north of Kyiv and near the border with Belarus, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant fell into Russian hands on the first day of the Russian invasion before falling victim to a power outage and communications networks.
According to daily reports by the IAEA based on information from the Ukrainian supervisory authority, the situation there has gradually returned to normal since the Russian soldiers left on March 31.
• Explosions in a separatist region in Moldova
On Monday and Tuesday, a series of blasts occurred in Transnistria, a Moscow-backed region that broke away from Moldova in a 1992 war. Russian troops have been stationed in the Separatist area ever since.
On Tuesday, two blasts damaged a radio tower, and on Monday an official building was the target of a rocket launcher attack in the separatist capital, Tiraspol. Neither of these incidents claimed casualties, but they are fueling fears in Moldova of an overflow from the conflict that is ravaging neighboring Ukraine. Kyiv on Tuesday accused Moscow of wanting to “destabilize” Transnistria.
“This is an attempt to increase tensions. We condemn such actions in the strongest possible terms. The Moldovan authorities will ensure that the republic is not drawn into a conflict,” Moldovan President Maia Sandu said after a National Security Council meeting.
She called on the population to “calm down” and announced a series of measures to ensure the security of the small Eastern European country, such as increased road and transport controls, border controls and additional measures to protect infrastructure.
• Meeting between the UN and Moscow
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Ukraine and Russia to work together, in coordination with the United Nations, to allow humanitarian corridors to open in Ukraine, where Moscow is leading a military offensive.
“I have proposed setting up a contact group that will bring together Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations to explore ways to open humanitarian corridors,” Antonio Guterres said at a press conference with Russian diplomat Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
“We urgently need” such “truly safe and effective” civilian evacuation corridors, he added. For his part, Sergey Lavrov assured that Russia is ready to cooperate with the UN to “relieve” the civilian population.
At the same time, Russia’s foreign minister accused countries allied with Ukraine of “using” the country as terrain to “irritate Russia” and accused Washington of wanting a “unipolar world without Russia.”
• A new package of sanctions in preparation
During a trip to Warsaw, EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson announced that the European Union would adopt a sixth package of sanctions against Russia “very soon”.
At the same time, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, in particular about “the continuity of French strategy in the context of the Ukraine conflict”, but also “the parameters for tightening European sanctions against Russia”. supported by the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union”.
Hugues Garnier with AFP journalist BFMTV