O VOO DO CORVO

 

4h ago

06.05

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/sep/02/russia-ukraine-war-live-news-updates-un-nuclear-team-zaporizhzhia-power-plant-moscow-warns-moldova-against-attack-latest

 

Summary and welcome

 

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

 

I’m Samantha Lock and I will be bringing you all the latest developments for the next short while. Whether you’ve been following our coverage overnight or you’ve just dropped in, here are the latest lines.

 

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will stay at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after agency chief Rafael Grossi warned that the physical integrity of the plant had been violated on several occasions.

 

It is 7.30am in Kyiv. Here is where things stand:

 

An expert team from the United Nations nuclear agency plan to stay at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after gaining long-awaited access to the site on Thursday. “We are not going anywhere. The IAEA is now there, it is at the plant and it is not moving – it’s going to stay there,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, told reporters after returning to Ukrainian-held territory. He said a group of IAEA experts had stayed behind at the plant in south-eastern Ukraine and would provide an impartial, neutral and technically sound assessment of the situation.

The physical integrity of the Zaporizhzhia plant had been violated on several occasions, Rafael Grossi said. “It is obvious that the plant and physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times,” he told reporters. “I worried, I worry and I will continue to be worried about the plant until we have a situation which is more stable, which is more predictable.”

Russia’s foreign minister warned Moldova that any actions seen as endangering the security of Russian troops in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack on Russia. Sergei Lavrov said: “Everyone should understand that any action that would threaten the security of our troops [in Transnistria] would be considered under international law as an attack on Russia.”

Russia and China launched large-scale military exercises involving several allied nations on Thursday, in a show of growing defence cooperation between Moscow and Beijing and a demonstration of Moscow’s military might. The Russian defence ministry said the Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise would be held until Wednesday in Russia’s far east and the Sea of Japan and involve more than 50,000 troops and 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships.

United States federal agents searched properties linked to a billionaire Russian oligarch in Manhattan, the Hamptons and an exclusive Miami island. FBI agents and Homeland Security Investigations personnel searched the properties, linked to Viktor Vekselberg, who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and whose $120m yacht was seized in April, NBC News reported.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is investigating allegations that two senior civil servants could have been spying for Russia, according to a local media report. Die Zeit, which first revealed the case, said the officials being investigated had close involvement with energy supply issues and held key positions.

A senior Russian oil executive has died after falling from the window of a Moscow hospital, months after his company criticised the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ravil Maganov, the chair of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, “fell from a window at Central clinical hospital”, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday, citing a source. “He died from injuries sustained.” Maganov is the second top Lukoil executive to die in mysterious circumstances in recent months.

Children returned to Ukrainian schools trashed by occupying Russian forces on Thursday. Only schools that are fit for use, are in areas that do not face a regular threat of shelling and that have enough students opt for in-person teaching will reopen. School administrations have been preparing for the new academic year by outfitting basements as shelters and training teachers on what to do in case of an attack. All children who attend are told to carry an emergency bag with a change of clothes, any medicine they may need, a note from their parents and, for the younger children, a favourite toy.

Russian forces have been forcibly transferring Ukrainian civilians to Russia or areas of Ukraine under their control, according to Human Rights Watch. Forced transfers were “a serious violation of the laws of war that constitute war crimes and potential crimes against humanity”, it said.