‘A Direct Confrontation With NATO’– Ukraine at War Update for April 5

It was another deadly day on Thursday for civilians throughout Eastern Ukraine, as at least eight people have now died from Russian attacks in several regions (including five in the Kharkiv region alone), Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said, while strikes from Ukrainian defense forces killed four others in occupied parts of Donetsk and Kherson, according to Moscow-installed authorities.

A fourth person was declared dead in Kharkiv on Thursday, in addition to the three rescue personnel there who were killed in a missile strike in Ukraine’s second-largest city in the early morning hours.

Russian artillery also slaughtered a married couple (aged 53 and 51) in the Donetsk town of Niu York, AFP reported, while yet another attack launched by Moscow’s forces mowed down a man riding a tractor in a rural village in Kharkiv on Thursday afternoon, the governor of that region said.

Also, a bomb blast killed an energy worker in the border region of Sumy, according to a statement from the country’s energy ministry, bringing Thursday’s death toll from Russian strikes to eight civilians.

Zelensky called the strikes on the Kharkiv apartment building, and the ensuing volley that killed rescue workers who responded there, a “despicable and cynical attack.”

“A few air defense systems could fundamentally change the situation,” he said in an evening address. “It is totally unacceptable that so many countries in the world are still thinking about how to counter terror, even though only a few political decisions are needed.”

Other Topics of Interest

Russian Air Attacks Kill Six in Northeast Ukraine

Russia launched a total of 20 Iranian-designed Shahed drones at the northeastern region overnight, of which 11 were shot down, Ukraine’s air force said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones were said to have killed two people in the Russian-occupied section of the Kherson region, AFP reported, citing occupational authorities there. On the same day, the Kremlin’s installed leader of the Donetsk region claimed that two civilians were killed by Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) strikes there.

Pizzeria killer, Russian collaborator in Donetsk sentenced to life in prison

Prosecutors in the Donetsk region announced that a resident of the city of Kramatorsk, who helped Russia target a missile strike on a pizzeria there last year, has been sentenced to life in prison for high treason.

The unnamed collaborator was approached by Moscow’s spy services to gather information about the restaurant and its clientele, including military personnel and other elite, prosecutors alleged.

On Thursday, he was convicted of facilitating the missile attack on “Ria Pizza” that killed 13 people, including author Victoria Amelina. The Lviv-born novelist had been working as a war-crimes researcher for the Ukraine-based “Truth Hounds” organization, when she was killed by the strike on June 27, 2023.

“The convict agreed to the offer. In the city center, he noticed cars with military license plates in the car park and military themselves in the restaurant,” a statement from the prosecutor’s office stated, adding that he had covertly recorded two videos of the site, which he sent along to his Russian contacts via the social media platform, Telegram.

Kremlin spokesman says Russia is now in a “direct confrontation” with NATO

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said on Thursday that relations between Russia and NATO have “slipped to the level of direct confrontation,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported, and he accused the Alliance of encroaching on Russia’s borders.

“This Kremlin narrative is also likely an attempt to pose NATO’s defensive activity in response to Russia’s outright aggression as provocative,” ISW analysts wrote. “ISW continues to assess that Russia has been preparing for a potential conventional war with NATO, including through ongoing conventional military reforms and by recreating the Leningrad Military District (LMD) and Moscow Military District (MMD) in western Russia. Russian officials have accused NATO of giving Russia a reason to reconstitute the LMD directly on the border with Finland.”

IAEA warns that Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is down to last power line

A backup power line supplying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) has gone offline, management of the Russian-occupied facility said on Thursday.

The plant is only keeping “only one of its six units in hot shut down” mode to provide district heating in the region and “process steam for liquid waste treatment at the site,” the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement.

IAEA experts stationed at the plant reported that “the sole remaining 330-kilovolt (kV) line” was shut down the same day, leaving plant “dependent on its sole remaining 750 kV line for off-site power.” 

The plant is the ninth-largest in the world and each of its six reactors has a capacity of generating 950 megawatts, enough energy for about four million households. Occupied since March 4, 2022, the ZNPP is one four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors in Ukraine, according to the World Nuclear Association.