Ukraine war latest: Zelensky warns Putin will attack Nato next year as Chernobyl hit

Ukraine’s nuclear ghosts were raised again yesterday after a drone armed with a warhead hit the protective outer shell of the plant at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident.

The strike, which Kyiv blamed on Moscow, did not breach the plant’s inner containment shell and radiation levels did not increase, according to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russia denied involvement, and accused Ukraine of waging a false flag attack. Their competing claims could not be independently verified.

Ukraine has a low chance of surviving Russia’s assault without U.S. support, president Volodymyr Zelensky said in a interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” program.

“Probably it will be very, very, very difficult. And of course, in all the difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low chance — low chance to survive without support of the United States,” Mr Zelensky said in the interview.

An excerpt from the program was released on Friday and the full show will be broadcast on Sunday.

His comments come after phone calls held earlier in the week by US president Donald Trump with Mr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Russia has detained another US citizen after customs officials found cannabis-laced marmalade in his luggage, Russian state media has reported, days after a Moscow-Washington prisoner swap that the White House called a diplomatic thaw and a step toward ending the fighting in Ukraine.

Russian police said the 28-year-old American had attempted to smuggle a “significant amount” of drugs into the country, the Interfax agency reported, citing Russia’s Federal Customs Service. The agency said the American was detained at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport after flying in from Istanbul last Friday.

Mash, a Russian Telegram channel with links to the security services, said the US citizen, identified only as K. Byers, faced up to seven years in prison if convicted.

The Washington-Moscow prisoner exchange this month saw Alexander Vinnik, a Russian cryptocurrency expert who faced Bitcoin fraud charges in the United States, returned to Russia after being freed for American Marc Fogel, a teacher from Pennsylvania who was detained in 2021 when traveling to Russia to work at a school.

Russian forces have taken control of two frontline settlements in eastern Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said this morning.

A ministry report said Russian forces had captured the village of Zelene Pole located between Pokrovsk, the focal point of Russian attacks in the region, and Velyuka Novosilka, a settlement that Russia’s military said it captured late last month.

Also captured, according to the Russian report, was the village of Dachne, west of the town of Kurakhove, which Russia’s military said it also captured last month.

The town had been subjected to weeks of heavy fighting.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in a late evening report, said both villages were among 11 settlements that had come under Russian attack in the Pokrovsk sector.

But it made no mention of them coming under Russian control.

In his keynote address at the Munich Security Conference, delivered to an auditorium packed with ministers of defence, generals and leaders from across Europe and beyond, JD Vance said: “The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor.”

“What I worry about is the threat from within,” he announced to the assembled securocrats.

They would have walked into the hall pretty sure that it’s Russia’s open military and violent designs on Ukraine, the Baltic nations, Poland, and much of the rest of eastern Europe, that’s been keeping them up at night.

“We are some way from a negotiated peace” between Russia and Ukraine, Britain’s foreign secretary David Lammy has suggested, after discussing the conflict in a meeting with US vice president JD Vance.

Speaking to broadcasters after the meeting he said “we are some way from a negotiated peace” and pledged the UK’s continued support for Ukraine.

He said he and the vice president “share the view that there has to be an enduring peace” and agreed that Ukraine would “have to be part of that negotiated deal”.

The Foreign Secretary also described his meeting with Mr Vance as “very good” and that the pair built on “the special relationship that the United States and the UK enjoy”.

He added: “Negotiations have not yet begun. These are talks, if you like, about talks, and we will continue to support Ukraine.”

“I was very encouraged in our conversations about Ukraine. All of us have this desire to bring this horrendous war to an end,” Mr Lammy said.

Oleksandr Tytarchuk, chief engineer at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, said the drone which struck the disused plant has pierced the outer cover of the containment vessel – completed in 2019 – and exploded inside.

A Russian drone attack had badly damaged the confinement structure around the disused Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a senior nuclear industry official has warned.

“The barrier which was supposed to prevent the spread of radioactive substances has ceased to function according to its original design,” Oleksandr Tytarchuk, the plant’s chief engineer, told reporters at the plant.

For a man who prides himself on his mastery of the “art of the deal”, Donald Trump has made an unpromising start to his negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

The betrayal of Ukraine that is now underway is also a betrayal of America’s friends and allies in Europe. If Ukraine is effectively indefensible, for lack of American support, then Europe as a whole is far weaker. It further undermines Nato, already being treated as a purely contingent and transactional obligation by President Trump.

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