European Union foreign ministers will discuss tougher sanctions on Russia on Monday, at a time when Moscow is accused of using the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant to deploy launchers and launch missiles at areas around the facility in southern Ukraine.
On Saturday, the governor of the Dnipro region, Valentin Ryzhnichenko, denounced a “flood of fire” caused by Russian shelling with “Grad missiles” that fell in “residential neighborhoods” in the city of Nikopol. “Rescuers found two dead people under the rubble,” he said.
EU ministers will have to consider several matters, including a European Commission proposal to ban gold purchases from Russia, to align EU sanctions with those of its G7 partners. Another proposal aims to put additional Russian figures on the EU blacklist. “Moscow must continue to pay a heavy price for its aggression,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
According to a senior European official, no decision is expected to be made during a preliminary discussion in Brussels on these new sanctions. The United Kingdom is the largest buyer of Russian gold (290 tons in 2020 at $16.9 billion according to Russian customs figures). – “Scorching” Moscow – For its part, the member states of the Group of Twenty said during a meeting in Bali that ended on Saturday without issuing a joint statement due to the lack of consensus, that the cost of the war on Ukraine is also felt by the rest of the world.
Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland considered Russia’s participation in the Bali meeting “absurd” and “like inviting a arsonist to a meeting of firefighters.” In Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian state operator of nuclear power plants accused the Russian army of deploying missile launchers at the site of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia (south) and using the facility to bombard the Dnipro region. “The situation (at the power plant) is very tense and the tension is increasing day by day,” Petro Cotten, head of the “Energo-Atom” company, said on Telegram, accusing “the occupiers of bringing their equipment there, including missile systems they had previously used in bombing from the other side of the border.” Dnipro River and on the territory of Nikopol, which is eighty kilometers southwest of Zaporizhia. He pointed out that a number of up to 500 Russian soldiers are deployed at the site of the largest station in Europe and “control” it. The largest nuclear plant in Ukraine fell into the hands of the Russians in early March, shortly following the start of the invasion on February 24.
‘The situation is under control’
The Ukrainian Air Force announced on Friday evening that Russian “KH-101” missiles were launched at around 22:00 from the Caspian Sea on Dnipro, and four of them were destroyed. And at dawn on Saturday, the Southern Command Center said that the situation was “tense, but it is under control.”
He wrote on Facebook that “the enemy continues to launch its attacks on occupied lands, but in the absence of any success on the ground, it intensifies missile and air strikes.” In the vicinity of Kharkiv, in the north-east of the country, which is the second largest city in Ukraine, Governor Oleg Senegopov said that a missile attack launched by Russia on Friday night killed three people in the town of Chugav. And on Friday evening, the city of Kramatorsk in the east, the main city in the Donbass Basin, which is still under the control of Ukraine, was bombed.
Moscow says it is making progress in Donbass
Ukraine and its Western allies are still shocked by the cruise missile strikes that destroyed the center of the city of Vinnytsia on Thursday, hundreds of kilometers west of the front. City officials said that the death toll from the Russian strikes had risen to 24 on Saturday. “A woman, unfortunately, died in hospital, 85 percent of whom were burnt,” the city’s governor, Sergey Borzov, announced.
He explained that “68 people are still receiving treatment, including four children.” In the face of international condemnation, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had targeted in Vinnytsia a meeting of “the leadership of the Ukrainian Air Force with representatives of foreign arms suppliers”.
But a senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was “no indication of a military target nearby.” Russia has never acknowledged mistakes or crimes committed by its armed forces in Ukraine and has systematically asserted that it only strikes military targets.
In the Donbass, the Russian army and the separatist forces confirmed that they would continue to advance, pointing out that they were in the process of taking full control of Seversk, which began to be attacked following taking control of Lyschansk to the east earlier this month. And the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected the Russian forces participating in the attack on Ukraine, without specifying the date of the visit or whether it took place in Ukraine or Russia, the second of its kind following a first inspection visit he made in June. The ministry explained that Shoigu “gave the necessary directions to increase” military pressure.
