Zelensky: Russian missile hits near southern Ukraine nuclear plant

A Russian missile hit near a nuclear power plant in the south of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Kyiv on Monday, accusing Russia endangering the whole world.

"We must stop it while it is not too late," he wrote on social media.

The South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant is located just under 300 kilometres south of the capital Kyiv. Three reactors with a net capacity of 2,850 megawatts are all in operation.

The Ukrainian state nuclear power plant operator Enerhoatom also reported a missile attack on an industrial site near the plant. Three high-voltage power lines and a facility of the nearby hydroelectric power plant were damaged.

In the nuclear power plant building itself, more than 100 windows were destroyed by the blast wave. The company published photos of a crater 4 metres in diameter and 2 metres deep.

The shelling of facilities further east at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant over the past several months has raised international concern about a potential nuclear disaster.

But unlike Zaporizhzhya, the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is under Ukrainian government control.

Meanwhile, local media reported that at least 13 people were killed by artillery fire in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, with two shells hitting a bus stop and a nearby store. There was no immediate information on the number of injured.

Local rulers appointed by Moscow blamed Ukrainian troops for the shelling. The industrial city has been under the control of separatists backed by Moscow since 2014.

Kiev regularly rejects such accusations and accuses Moscow of firing upon territory it holds in order to produce anti-Ukrainian propaganda for its own media.

In Russia-controlled Luhansk, which together with Donetsk make up the Donbass region of Ukraine, a court handed a 13-year prison sentence to two local employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for alleged espionage for Ukraine and the US, Russian state news agency TASS reported.

The OSCE men collected "evidence of the movement of military equipment and weapons and also the relocation of units" from August 2021 to April 2022, according to the court in the eastern Ukrainian separatist stronghold.

"I call for their immediate and unconditional release," OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid said. The two men were only performing their official duties in Ukraine, she added.

Four local OSCE staff members are said to have been arrested in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Meanwhile, last week's discovery of a mass burial site with more than 400 bodies in the liberated north-eastern city of Izyum continued to generate controversy, with the Kremlin once again denying Russian forces had anything to do with the horrific scene.

Ukraine says war crimes were committed in Izyum, which Russian forces withdrew from amid a lightning counteroffensive by Kiev, and Zelensky accused Russia of "Nazi"-like practices.

"This is a lie," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said according to the Interfax news agency, adding that Russia will defend the "truth."

Peskov said Kyiv and its allies were lobbing the same unfounded accusations as they did in March, when atrocities against civilians were uncovered in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv.

"This is the same scenario as in Bucha," he said.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian troops have reportedly pushed Russian forces further east as they recapture more territory and consolidate gains made in a lightening offensive launched in late August.

Media in Kiev on Monday reported that Ukrainian troops had logged battlefield wins in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Also on Monday, the German Ministry of Defence said that the Bundeswehr is planning to provide Ukraine with four more self-propelled howitzers to fight off attacks by Moscow's forces and the delivery will be initiated immediately.

The self-propelled howitzer 2000 is a heavy artillery gun with a range of up to 40 kilometres. Ammunition is also due to be supplied.

Menwhile, the daily British intelligence update on the war said the Russian air force is coming under increasing pressure due to the lost of jets and the poor situational awareness of Russian pilots.

"Russia's continued lack of air superiority remains one of the most important factors underpinning the fragility of its operational design in Ukraine," the ministry said.