UN to hold emergency meeting on Ukraine nuclear crisis

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today to address the crisis at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex. Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of having bombed the power plant.

A diplomatic source at the United Nations headquarters in New York said, the Council’s 15-member nations would gather at the request of Russia.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting raged around the eastern Ukrainian town of Pisky as Russia pressed its campaign to seize all of the industrialized Donbas regions.

According to local media reports, an official with the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic said the northwest provincial capital Donetsk, was under the control of Russian and separatist forces. However, Ukrainian officials denied that the heavily-fortified town, a key to the defence of Donetsk, had fallen.

The Donbas region comprising Luhansk and Donetsk provinces became Moscow’s main objective after it failed to seize the capital Kyiv at the start of the war in February.

Luhansk is now almost completely under Russian control. However, Donetsk is still holding out.