Ukraine residents flee town near nuclear site; grain cargo reaches Syria

Artillery fire resumed on Sunday from the direction of a nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, with shells streaking into a town from which the Ukrainian army has been unable to return fire, for fear of causing a meltdown or releasing radiation at the plant.

There were reports that conditions were unraveling in and near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The plant is the first active nuclear power plant in a combat zone. The United States and European Union have called for the formation of a demilitarised zone. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that Russia had resorted to “nuclear blackmail” at the plant, reiterating a Ukrainian analysis that Moscow was using it to slow a Ukrainian counteroffensive toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, where Russian conventional military defenses appear increasingly wobbly.

The first vessel to depart Ukraine under the UN-brokered safe-transit deal reached in late July has reportedly arrived for unloading in Syria after its corn cargo was rejected by earlier buyers.