Russia and Ukraine accused each other of fresh shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, just two days after the plant was cut off from Ukraine's electricity, causing a huge power outage and prompting international fears of a radiation disaster before backup diesel generators kicked in.
Inspectors from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog are expected to visit the plant this week.
Shelling at the plant may result in hydrogen leakage, sputtering of radioactive substances and fires, Ukraine's nuclear power agency warned in a statement, as it accused Russian troops of "repeatedly" targeting the facility over the past day.
Russia's attack and control of the plant was a threat to "the security of the whole world," it added. Russia's ministry of defense meanwhile said Ukraine had fired shells at the facility in the past 24 hours.
Negotiations for a visit to the nuclear power plant by U.N. inspectors are nearing completion, but the Kremlin is insisting on a Russian media presence for the visit, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Washington Post.
"The Russians want to send Russian media to the power plant to welcome the delegation and to stage a propaganda show," Kuleba said.
At the United Nations, Russia blocked the final draft of a declaration on a joint treaty on nuclear security after weeks of negotiations. The Russian delegation objected to a clause in the text regarding the situation at the Zaporizhzhia power plant.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was essential for International Atomic Energy Agency representatives to get to the plant as soon as possible and to help keep it "under permanent Ukrainian control."
"The situation remains precarious and dangerous," Zelenskyy said Friday. "Any repetition of [Thursday's] events, i.e., any disconnection of the station from the grid or any actions by Russia that could trigger the shutdown of the reactors, will once again put the station one step away from disaster."
Ukraine has claimed Russia is using the power plant as a shield by storing weapons there and launching attacks from around it. Moscow, for its part, accuses Ukraine of firing on the nuclear complex.
Ukraine has canceled an agreement with Russia, according to a parliamentary official. It was not clear which agreement he was referring to, though in a deal signed by Russian, Ukrainian and American leaders in 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons for security guarantees.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, one person was killed and another wounded in Russian firing in the Mykolaiv region, local government officials said. Mykolaiv city is an important Black Sea port and shipbuilding center.
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Saturday that two people were killed in Russian firing on the city of Bakhmut, a significant target for Russian and separatist forces seeking to take control of the parts of the region they do not already hold.
Almost 75% of Donetsk's population has been evacuated since the war began, Kyrylenko said, adding that Ukraine retained control of about 45% of the region, but all cities were being shelled constantly. The area, along with neighboring Luhansk, has long been a flashpoint for conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine's southern command used rockets to take out a key bridge used by Russian troops in the southern Kherson region, Reuters reported.
Russia probably has increased the intensity of its assaults in the Donbas region in response to speculation that Ukraine is planning a major counteroffensive, Britain's Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update Saturday. However, Russian forces have secured few territorial gains overall, it added.
The British government announced Saturday that it was giving Ukraine underwater drones and training sailors to use them to clear mines from the ravaged country's coastline. Mines laid in the Black Sea during the war have hampered seaborne exports of Ukrainian grain to world markets, although an agreement reached in July has allowed shipments to resume along a single corridor.
LOW EXPECTATIONS
Russia blocked the adoption of a joint statement to close out a United Nations conference on an ongoing nuclear arms treaty, Western officials said, a diplomatic broadside that underscored the global ramifications of the war in Ukraine.
Moscow's representatives at the monthlong conference objected to language in the agreement that raised concerns about Ukraine, the Russian state news agency Tass reported.
The monthlong conference -- on upholding and strengthening the 50-year-old global Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons -- is held every five years and had once been seen as a chance to deal with loopholes that have allowed a resurgence in the spread of nuclear weapons.
Expectations for breakthroughs were low. The last conference also failed to result in a consensus document.
A high-ranking Russian diplomat in Moscow's delegation, Andrey Belousov, blamed the lack of agreement on efforts by other nations to use the document "to settle scores with Russia, raising topics that are not directly related to the treaty."
"The conference has become a political hostage to those states that over the last four weeks poisoned discussions with their politicized, biased, groundless and false statements with regard to Ukraine," Belousov said in a statement at the close of the session.
Western officials immediately slammed Russia for throwing a wrench in the proceedings, which early on had included discussions on the threat of a nuclear confrontation or a nuclear accident emerging from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Russia obstructed progress by refusing to compromise on proposed text accepted by all other states," Australia's foreign minister, Penny Wong, wrote on Twitter.
The conference was taking place after a two-year delay because of the covid-19 pandemic. High-level representatives from member states, including the prime minister of Japan, the U.S. secretary of state and dozens of foreign ministers and delegations, attended.
U.S. officials made clear that Russia's objections were related to Ukraine.
"We were not able to achieve a consensus document because of the inexplicable choice of one state," Adam Scheinman, the U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation, wrote on Twitter. "The U. S. deeply regrets Russia's refusal to acknowledge the grave situation in Ukraine. It is absurd that Russia could not do so."
USING SHIPPING MORE
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has expanded its use of maritime shipping to deliver weapons for the war in Ukraine, U.S. defense officials said, after relying heavily on aircraft early in Russia's invasion to get arms to Kyiv as quickly as possible.
The Defense Department began sending some items by sea a few weeks after the invasion but significantly broadened the effort this spring because the United States began providing Ukraine with howitzer artillery and other heavy weapons that require a steady flow of large-caliber ammunition, U.S. defense officials said at the headquarters of U.S. Transportation Command during a recent visit by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
"Once we started to provide them howitzers, we knew that we were going to need more ammunition," said Army Col. Steven Putthoff, the deputy director of operations at U.S. Transportation Command. "So, we could plan ahead a little bit more and then we could start to use more sealift to provide that support and to get it there sometimes even ahead of the request."
The expansion underscores a new phase in the campaign, after a Russian assault on Kyiv was repelled and Ukraine and its partners settled in for what is expected to be a grinding war that could continue for months more and possibly years.
The Biden administration has approved $12.9 billion of military assistance for Ukraine so far and pledged Wednesday an additional $2.98 billion of support.
U.S. military officials declined to detail specific routes used to get weapons to Ukraine but said some of the weapons coming from the continental United States find their way directly to the battlefield, while others are being used to replenish American stocks elsewhere in Europe from which U.S. military officials withdrew supplies to arm Ukraine.
While aircraft can reach Europe from the United States much more quickly, ships can haul vast quantities of cargo that could allow Ukraine to build up a larger arsenal for future campaigns in the war.
The effort comes a year after the United States carried out a harrowing evacuation of more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan, taxing the Pentagon's fleet of cargo jets. At the height of the operation, a C-17 was landing at Hamid Karzai International Airport at least once per hour.
That heavy schedule required the Transportation Command to suspend other operations until the evacuation was completed and then catch up aircraft on maintenance, Putthoff said.
During the evacuation, Putthoff said, "everything else on the world kind of went on hold, what we call 'broken glass.' We had to go back in and clean that up the next few months."
The weapons deliveries to Ukraine are different, he said. While virtually all flights landing in Kabul during the evacuation were military jets, the Pentagon has relied heavily on chartered aircraft and ships to move equipment for Ukraine, leaving the U.S. military free to carry out a variety of other transport missions.
At Transportation Command, Hicks met Aug. 18 with military officials including Air Force Gen. Jackie Van Ovost, the command's top officer. Van Ovost said that anticipating possible needs and setting routes as quickly as possible is key.
Equipment usually moves from a military depot by train or truck to an airport or seaport, and then arrives in a second location from where it often must be moved again.
"We're not graded on getting it to a location where it's not being used," Van Ovost said, speaking to Hicks, the Pentagon's No. 2 official. "We're getting graded on end-to-end."
Van Ovost said the manual calculations that U.S. military officials had to do in the past to move equipment took days.
"Now, we have systems that allow us to perfect it," she said. "It's less airplanes, in the right locations, at the right times. And it's done by the press of a button, and three or four seconds later we have three or four options."
Hicks credited Transcom officials with carrying out an "impressive ballet" to move everything that is needed. She told reporters after that she wants to make sure the military has the ability to sustain its fleets and keep them appropriately sized.
"Ukraine, as challenging as it is, does not compare really to the level of lift and mobility and refueling that need to be done in a major conflict," Hicks said.
Among the weapons the Pentagon has delivered to Ukraine so far are more than 1,400 anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, 8,500 Javelin anti-armor missiles critical in destroying Russian tanks, 700 Switchblade drones and 142 pieces of howitzer artillery with more than 900,000 rounds.
On Wednesday, senior Pentagon officials said they expect even more military assistance to flow to Ukraine after the recent $3 billion commitment.
"This may be our largest security assistance package to date, but let me be clear: It will not be our last," said Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, in a news briefing. "We will continue to closely consult with Ukraine on its near-, mid- and long-term capability needs."
Information for this article was contributed by Jennifer Hassan, John Hudson and Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post and by Cassandra Vinograd and Matt Surman of The New York Times and by Derek Gatopoulos of The Associated Press.
Gallery: Images from Ukraine, month 7
