Ukraine

KYIV, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Ukraine plans to expand the number of districts on the war's front lines where civilian evacuations will be mandatory, as those areas could be occupied and face central heating problems this winter, a deputy prime minister said on Friday.

The Ukrainian government launched a campaign of mandatory evacuations in July for people in the eastern Donetsk region that it began implementing this month.

Ukrainian-controlled districts and towns in the industrial east are under constant shelling from Russia and its proxies.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Authorities began distributing iodine tablets to residents near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Friday in case of a radiation leak, amid mounting fears that the fighting around the complex could trigger a catastrophe.

The move came a day after the plant was temporarily knocked offline because of what officials said was fire damage to a transmission line. The incident heightened dread of a nuclear disaster in a country still haunted by the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl.

KYIV, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The International Atomic Energy Agency could travel to Ukraine's Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant for a mission in southern Ukraine in the coming days, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Thursday.

"A visit is planned. We are talking about the coming days - definitely no later than the beginning of September," Galushchenko told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv.

KYIV, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Ukraine's capital renamed 95 streets on Thursday as part of a drive to purge Russian and Soviet place names, Kyiv's mayor announced a day after Ukraine marked 31 years of independence.

Since Russia invaded in February, Ukraine has accelerated what it calls "derussification", a campaign to shed the legacy of hundreds of years of rule by Moscow.

Aug 25 (Reuters) - The world narrowly avoided a radiation accident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station in Ukraine on Thursday after power was cut to the two remaining working reactors, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

Ukraine's state nuclear company Energoatom said fires in the ash pits of a coal power station near the complex had disconnected the reactors from the power grid. The company blamed Russian "invaders" for the disconnection.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a major buildup of his country’s military forces Thursday in an apparent effort to replenish troops that have suffered heavy losses in six months of bloody warfare and prepare for a long, grinding fight ahead in Ukraine.

The move to increase the number of troops by 137,000, or 13%, to 1.15 million by the end of the year came amid chilling developments on the ground in Ukraine:

NIKOPOL, Ukraine (AP) — The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the middle of the fighting in Ukraine was temporarily cut off from the electrical grid Thursday because of fire damage, causing a blackout in the region and heightening fears of a catastrophe in a country haunted by the Chernobyl disaster.

KYIV, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Ukraine's top military intelligence official said on Wednesday that Russia's military offensive was slowing because of moral and physical fatigue in their ranks and Moscow's "exhausted" resource base.

The remark on television by Defence Intelligence agency chief Kyrylo Budanov was one of the strongest signals by Kyiv that it believes Russia's offensive power may be waning.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine nervously braced for what President Volodymr Zelenskyy warned could be especially brutal Russian attacks Wednesday as the country observed its Independence Day — and marked the war’s six-month point — under conditions considered too dangerous to allow any major public celebrations in the capital.

Residents of Kyiv woke up to air raid sirens, but there were no immediate attacks.

Kyiv authorities banned large gatherings in the capital through Thursday, fearing the national holiday might bring particularly heavy Russian missile strikes.

KYIV, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Ukraine will not agree to any proposal to freeze the current frontlines in its conflict with Russia in order to "calm" Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told a news conference on Tuesday.

He also urged the world not to show fatigue with the war, saying this would pose a big threat to the whole world.