Ukraine war: Russian missile attack kills seven in Zaporizhzhia

In a separate development on Tuesday, Ukraine and Russia accused each other of launching a drone attack on a convoy of vehicles transporting experts from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The agency said one of its cars was “severely damaged” as the convoy was heading to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). No injuries were reported.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi condemned the attack on his staff as “unacceptable”, stressing that the agency was “working to prevent a nuclear accident during the military conflict”.

Russia seized the ZNPP – Europe’s largest nuclear power plant – soon after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Zaporizhzhia is one of Ukraine’s four south-eastern regions Russia claims to have annexed since 2022, without fully controlling any of them.

In 2014, Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula.