Ukraine: Moscow-appointed mayor injured in blast

A Ukrainian official and Russian news agencies have reported that the mayor of Moscow, located in the southern Ukrainian city of Energodar, which hosts the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was injured in a blast on Sunday.

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Andrei Schwartzky was appointed mayor of Energodor after Russian forces took control of the city and the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant on its territory.

“We have definite confirmation that at the time of the explosion, the self-proclaimed head of the popular administration + Shevchik and his bodyguards were wounded,” Telegram Dimitrov Orlov, elected mayor of Energodar, said.

The latter said they were hospitalized with “injuries of various severity” but the circumstances of the explosion needed to be clarified.

He said there were no other injuries in the blast.

Citing a source from the emergency services, Mr Shevtchik was in intensive care, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported. According to another Russian agency, TASS, the bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a police station, citing a source in the police force.

With a population of about 50,000, Energodor was built in the 1970s around a nuclear power plant on the Dnieper River opposite the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia.

The plant has been the scene of clashes since the early days of the conflict, amid fears of a possible nuclear disaster in a country with a history of a reactor explosion in Chernobyl in 1986.