Global Breath Intake

"Russia has consciously undertaken an armed attack on the nuclear power site, an action that violated all international agreements within the IAEA."

"[Plant staff] are monitoring the condition of power units and ensuring their operation [is] in accordance with the requirements of technical regulations for safe operation."

Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

 

"The city is in a very, very difficult state of siege."

"Relentless shelling of residential blocks is ongoing, airplanes have been dropping bombs on residential areas."

Mayor Vadym Boychenko, Mariupol 

"The Russian side is not holding to the ceasefire and has continued firing on Mariupol itself and on its surrounding area."

"Talks with the Russian Federation are ongoing regarding setting up a ceasefire and ensuring a safe humanitarian corridor."

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head, office of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky 

A view shows a damaged administrative building of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine in this handout picture released March 4, 2022 (National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom/Reuters)

Moscow is outdoing itself in risk-taking in its decision to blow right past all warning inhibitions by responsible governmental and international agencies of the extreme danger inherent in a conflict situation taking place in a geographic area housing nuclear power plants. Nuclear plants have been around for half a century but never before has a conflict situation seen deliberate targeting of a nuclear installation for the purpose of making it a trophy possession and risking an accident of monumental proportions.

 

Russia is attacking Ukraine on many fronts with its forces besieging and bombarding towns and cities non-stop. Kyiv is in direct danger of an overwhelming invasion itself with a huge Russian armoured column sitting for the time being outside the capital as though awaiting further orders to proceed. The convoy, stretching for miles, may very well be bogged down in spring melt, a phenomenon known to have occurred during other military incursions when the massive weight of military equipment stalled as snow and ice recede. 

Mariupol, the city that Vladimir Putin slavers to annex as a direct land link for Russia to access Crimea, is under heavy shelling, its mayor announcing there was no water, no heat, nor electricity. Moreover the port city in the southeast, after almost a week of encirclement and attack, is running out of food. "We are simply being destroyed", said Mayor Vadym Boychenko.

 

People cross a destroyed bridge as they evacuate the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, during heavy shelling and bombing on Saturday. More than one million people have fled Ukraine's borders since the invasion by Russia began on Feb. 24. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Refugees from eastern Ukraine have been steadily moving toward the country's west in the direction of borders with its neighbours, anxious to escape the fate of thousands of their compatriots who have died since the start of the invasion. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant attack was a perilous moment of high tension. With shells hitting the area of the plant, a blaze began in a training building leading to global alarm of the dread consequences until firemen were able to extinguish the flames.

While the plant's Ukrainian operators are still in charge of the plant and its safety, the nuclear complex of six reactors is now in Russian hands. According to IAEA chief Raphael Grossi, there was no real damage sustained by the plant, but one only of its six reactors was working with about 60 percent capacity. There was relief when it was announced that there was no radiation leaks and the plant was working normally.

Surveillance camera footage shows the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after shelling in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine on Friday. (Zaporizhzhya NPP via Reuters)

 

The Russian defence ministry, with the plant now controlled by Russian troops, blamed the fire on a Ukrainian saboteur attack. Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, stated that Russia was steadily increasing strikes on civilian areas "with the most brutal rigour". Leading Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz to phone Putin demanding the war be stopped. 

Russia's response, as expected, was that it does not target civilians; its aim is solely to disarm Ukraine. Its focus in Ukraine is a campaign to counter NATO aggression and support of the Ukraine government under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The intention is to capture the neo-Nazis representing the government. A perversion of reality in fact, since it is Russia's Vladimir Putin whose fascism has been revealed in his unprovoked attack on a neighbour.

Neighbours and relatives help remove the rubble of a house destroyed amid shelling in Markhalivka on Saturday. (Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images)

 

At the southern port city of Mykolayiv, Russian troops had entered, but the advance was halted by Ukrainian defences. Had it been captured the city with a population of a half-million would represent the largest Ukrainian city yet to fall to the Russian invasion. "We can feel cautious optimism about the future prospects of the enemy offensive -- I think that it will be stopped in other areas also", said government adviser Oleksi Arestovych.

Kherson, in the south, the first sizable Ukrainian city, was captured by Russian forces this week. Thousands of its undaunted people mounted a protest waving Ukrainian flags, shouting "Kherson is Ukraine!" In the northeast cities of Kharkiv and Chernihiv, bombimg has become more intense. Neither the Kremlin nor the Russian president are particularly seized over the deaths of civilians and mounting casualties of their bombardments.

 

Getty Images

 

Russia has reverted to the tyrannical rule of a despot, where opponents of the government are mostly incarcerated in prison with trumped-up charges of undermining the state; others forced into exile. Further dissent has led to crackdowns where authorities now have banned any reports whose language is offensive to Russian aims in Ukraine. Verbiage in reference to "special military operation", substituting the word "war" is off limits.

Thousands of arrests of anti-war demonstrators have taken place. Access to foreign news source websites has been cut for spreading "false information:" about Russia's peacekeeping mission in Ukraine and its intent to save the country from the machinations of nationalist war-mongers. A prison term of up to 15 years was passed into law on Friday, for spreading intentionally "fake news" about the Russian military's presence in Ukraine.

Refugees from Ukraine are seen on the other side of their journey, at a distribution centre in Korczowa, Poland, on Saturday. (Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images)