Shellfire at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine fuelled fears of major disaster as both sides kept blaming each other, while Russian forces targeted towns on the far side of the river from Europe’s largest atomic plant. Read full story
FIGHTING
* Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom said Russian troops again shelled the grounds of the Zaporizhzhia plant in the last 24 hours and damage was being assessed.
* Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the complex three times in 24 hours. It said four shells hit the roof of a building storing “168 assemblies of U.S. Westinghouse nuclear fuel”.
* Standing beside a crater at a school two hours’ drive from the plant that had been largely reduced to rubble, the governor of Zaporizhzhia region, Oleksandr Starukh, told Ukrainian television people were being informed how to apply iodine in case of a radiation leak.
* Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed a large ammunition depot in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region that had contained U.S.-made HIMARS rocket systems and shells for M777 Howitzers.
* The Russian Air Force shot down a MiG-29 aircraft in the eastern Donetsk region, the ministry said, and destroyed six missile and artillery weapons depots in the Donetsk, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions.
ECONOMY, DIPLOMACY
* Millions of tonnes of food from previous harvests in Ukraine still must be cleared to make room in silos for the next one, said Amir Abdulla, the U.N. coordinator for a key grains deal. Read full story
* Germany may nationalise the energy business abandoned by Russia’s Gazprom in April. The government has set up a holding company to carry out a possible nationalisation of Gazprom Germania, Welt am Sonntag reported on Sunday. Read full story
* Dell Technologies, a vital supplier of servers in Russia, said it had ceased all Russian operations after closing its offices in mid-August, the latest Western firm to exit. Read full story
* Merchant sailors will be allowed to leave Ukraine if they receive approval from their local military administrative body, the Ukrainian prime minister said, a move that could ease the process of shipping grain from the country’s ports. Read full story
* Britain’s defence ministry said it was giving six underwater drones to Ukraine to help clear its coastline of mines and make grain shipments safer. Britain will also train dozens of Ukrainian navy personnel to use the drones, the ministry said in a statement.
(REUTERS)