Ukraine-Russia war live news: Three killed in missile attack in Zaporizhzhia

Three civilians were killed in a Russian missile attack on the infrastructure facility in Zaporizhzhia, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The attack was reported at around 12.30pm on Monday at one of the enterprises.

“As a result of the strike, three civilians died and there are also wounded. Casualty reports are being verified,” they said.

Images have been released of workers trying to repair a thermal power plant damaged by a recent Russian missile strike.

Ukrainian forces haven’t revealed the location of the strike.

The second picture shows pressure gauges destroyed in the drone attack.

Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, said that a woman was among the dead and three others were injured in a Facebook post.

“At least one person was killed and three more were wounded in today’s shelling of the Donetsk region,” said Filashkin.

He said, that enemy artillery strikes in Chasiv Yar killed a 77-year-old woman and damaged six private houses.

The condition of the three injured is unknown.

He added: “Please everyone: take care of yourselves! Make the evacuation!”

Speaking to The Independent from an undisclosed location in Donetsk, deputy commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, Maksym Zhorin, issued a troubling warning to Kyiv’s Western partners.

The West, he said, must urgently prepare. “Create serious defence systems that could counteract Russia because it will undoubtedly open its mouth and try to swallow the rest of Europe,” he warned.

“Today, a kamikaze drone was shot down over the plant. It fell on the roof of Unit 6,” the Russia-controlled plant said, below a picture of reactor No. 6, which is currently shut down.

Russia’s state-owned Promsvyazbank on Monday said it had launched “special military operation” bank cards for combat veterans, giving them a form of electronic identification and a simple way to get access to social benefits.

Russia refers to the war in Ukraine as a “special military operation”, although the Kremlin said last month that the conflict had “become a war” because of the involvement of the West.

Promsvyazbank offers a range of services but has focused on state employees and the defence sector since it was bailed out by the central bank in 2017. It has opened branches in the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow claimed to have annexed in 2022.

The bank has now started issuing cards in Avdiivka, a town captured by Russia in February, the Donetsk region’s pro-Russian information ministry said on Monday.

Promsvyazbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment when asked about Avdiivka.

Russian President Vladimir Putin moved to annex Ukraine‘s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in September 2022, following what Ukraine said were sham referendums. The move was condemned by many countries as illegal.

Russian forces only partly control the four regions.

Below are some of the latest photos from Ukraine

Russia has claimed that Ukraine is endangering European nuclear security by attacking the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station for a fourth time with a drone that was shot down over a reactor.

Ukraine has denied it is behind a series of drone attacks on the plant over the past 48 hours, including three drone attacks on Sunday, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said had endangered nuclear safety.

The plant, run by a unit of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said Ukraine‘s armed forces attacked the plant on Monday with a “kamikaze drone”. It was shot down over the plant and fell on the roof of reactor No. 6. They did not provide any evidence.

“It is dangerous, dangerous for the station, dangerous for the surrounding territory and potentially dangerous for all of humanity,” Yuri Chernichuk, the Russian-installed director of the nuclear power plant, told Reuters.

“No nuclear reactor was made to be in the centre of fighting,” he said.

Britain must ramp up its defence and aid spending and bolster its diplomatic and intelligence networks amid “the most dangerous period” since the Cold War, the UK’s former top civil servant has warned.

Writing in The Independent, former cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill urged the government to nearly double Britain’s defence spending to reach 4 per cent of GDP and restore the international aid budget to 0.7 per cent of national income, slashed by Boris Johnson in 2021.