Ukraine Update….172 days into the Russian move on the Ukraine….

• An employee at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and his driver were killed in a mortar explosion outside the facility, underscoring the perilous situation at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, the president of Ukraine’s nuclear power company said Tuesday.
• Russia’s United Nations ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, said at the U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday that the country did not have any heavy artillery at the facility. Nebenzya called on the United States and others to “stop covering up what your Kyiv proteges are doing and compel them to stop attacking.”
• Recent shelling has further damaged infrastructure at the nuclear power plant, Ukraine told the International Atomic Energy Agency. Shelling over the past three days damaged laboratory and chemical facilities, as well as transformers at a nearby thermal plant. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi repeated his call for an urgent expert mission to the plant, saying the agency’s presence would “reduce the risk of a severe nuclear accident in Europe.”
• Richard Mills, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at the council meeting that “the entire international community are living under the threat of a nuclear catastrophe.” Russia is using the nuclear plant “as a staging ground for war,” he said, but he did not directly address the question of which side is shelling the area.

• Giving his Tuesday address from near the Crimea Platform office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky echoed his previous pledge in front of summit attendees to “free Crimea from occupation.” “We will certainly come to our cities in Crimea, to our people in Crimea and return to them the freedom that belongs to them by right,” Zelensky said in his address, also noting that 40 leaders from across the world gathered for the second Crimea Platform summit.
• At the virtual diplomatic gathering, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new sanctions targeting 62 high-ranking Russian government officials, their family members and senior defense ministers. Trudeau also allocated nearly $3 million in funding toward Ukraine’s security sector. European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen said at the same virtual address to the Crimea Platform that Russia used Crimea as a “testing ground” for human rights violations.
• Kyiv banned public Independence Day celebrations in the capital this week, citing heightened risks of attack. In his address Tuesday, Zelensky implored Ukrainians to observe curfews on the holiday Wednesday, and pay attention to air sirens and official announcements. “We must be aware that tomorrow, hideous Russian provocations and brutal strikes are possible,” he said.
• Russia’s domestic security agency, the FSB, is expected to launch “terrorist attacks” in Russian cities and blame them on Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Tuesday. He cited the death of Daria Dugina, the editor of a Russian disinformation website who was killed in a car explosion Saturday, and said, without providing evidence, that her killing was the first of what would be a series of attacks organized by the FSB to drum up domestic support for the war. Russia has blamed Ukraine for the bombing.
• A State Department spokesman said the United States has information that Russia is “stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.” The spokesman told The Washington Post on Tuesday that “given Russia’s track record in Ukraine, we are concerned about the continued threat that Russian strikes pose to civilians and civilian infrastructure.”

• Russia is constructing a floating bridge over the Dnieper River, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update, and troops probably moved barges into position over the weekend. The improvised span will run beside what’s left of the Antonovsky Bridge, which played a key role in transporting supplies to Russian troops before Ukrainian forces destroyed it this month.
• Vyacheslav Gladkov, regional governor of Belgorod, Russia, said a fire that broke out at a munitions depot there Thursday was the result of “hot weather.” On Telegram, the governor called the incident a “spontaneous combustion.” Two Russian villages in Belgorod, near Ukraine’s northeast border, were evacuated.
• Almost 9,000 members of Ukraine’s military have been killed in the war, Reuters reported, citing information from Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, head of Ukraine’s armed forces.
• More than 800 people, including 238 children, were evacuated from the unoccupied part of the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Monday on Telegram….

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