Russian attack kills 25 on Ukraine’s Independence Day: Kyiv

Hundreds gathered to mark Ukraine Independence Day in Central Park, New York on Wednesday. Pic/AFP

A Russian attack killed 25 civilians when missiles struck a railway station and a residential area in eastern Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said, as the nation marked its Independence Day under heavy shelling.

The death toll rose from initially reported 22 after three more bodies were retrieved from rubble in Chaplyne as rescue operations ended, Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said Thursday. Russia's defence ministry said on Thursday its forces had hit Chaplyne railway station in Ukraine's Dniptropetrovsk.

The missile strikes and artillery shelling of frontline towns, such as Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Nikopol and Dnipro, followed President Volodymyr Zelensky's warnings of risk of "repugnant Russian provocations" ahead of Wednesday's 31st anniversary of independence from Soviet rule. Aug. 24 also marked six months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu discussed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with his French counterpart, the ministry said on Thursday. It has come under repeated fire in recent weeks, raising fears of a nuclear disaster.

The last two working reactors at the plant were disconnected from Ukraine's electricity grid on Thursday. Ukraine's state nuclear company Energoatom said fires broke out in the ash pits of a coal power station near the Zaporizhzhia reactor complex and interfered with power lines connecting the plant to the grid. "As a result, the station's two working power units were disconnected from the network," Energoatom said in a statement.

"Thus, the actions of the invaders caused a complete disconnection of the (nuclear power plant) from the power grid - the first in the history of the plant," it said. The plant supplied more than 20% of Ukraine's electricity and its loss would pile new strain on the government, which is already bracing for a difficult wartime winter of energy shortages.

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