Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the United Kingdom on Sunday for high-level defence talks with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany, following renewed Russian strikes that killed at least five people and damaged a nuclear facility in northern Ukraine.
Zelensky confirmed his arrival in London in a post on social media, saying he would meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to discuss Ukraine’s defence needs and efforts to increase pressure on Russia to end the war.
Kyiv has continued to press its Western allies for additional air defence systems and ammunition, as Ukraine faces sustained daily drone and missile attacks across multiple regions.
On Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said Russia launched waves of drones and other munitions across the country, with one strike damaging a nuclear storage facility within the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, Energoatom, said the facility’s fuel reception building was “partially destroyed,” though radiation levels remained within normal limits.
President Zelensky said the strike involved an Iranian-designed Shahed drone and accused Russia of escalating attacks on sensitive infrastructure.
“As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels,” Zelensky said, adding that Russia’s “brazenness” had increased significantly.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was sending inspectors to assess the damage, describing the incident as “deeply concerning.”
The damaged site is located within the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, and is used for storing spent nuclear fuel from Ukraine’s active reactors.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian officials reported multiple civilian deaths from Russian strikes. In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, at least two people were killed in a bombardment of a public transport stop, while a separate drone strike killed a 56-year-old minibus driver.
In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, two men were also killed in separate attacks, according to regional authorities.
On the Russian side, local officials in the Belgorod border region said a Ukrainian drone strike killed a woman and injured her husband.
The war, now in its fifth year, has seen hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia currently occupies parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, as well as significant areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
