The Russian Defence Ministry today said its forces had taken control of the village of Kucherivka in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region and Rivne in the eastern Donetsk region. The ministry added that Moscow had carried out coordinated strikes on Ukrainian transport infrastructure, fuel and energy facilities, military airfields, and long-range drone complexes.

Local officials in Ukraine reported that a man was killed in a drone attack in the northern Chernihiv region last night. A combined missile-and-drone strike on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages. The latest wave of attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last evening that he had held a substantive phone call with U.S. officials involved in negotiations with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida.

Separately, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors said that the protective shield covering Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear reactor can no longer perform its main containment function following a drone strike earlier this year. The IAEA reported that the massive structure built to secure the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster has lost key safety capabilities, including its confinement function. The agency said that repairs are essential to prevent further degradation of the nuclear shelter.