Latest Developments in Ukraine: Sept. 21

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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.

12:23 a.m.: Russia is stepping up “nuclear blackmail” by bombing the site of Ukraine’s Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant, its director Igor Polovich said Tuesday, according to Agence-France-Presse.

With Monday’s strike in the southern Mykolaiv region “the second phase of their nuclear blackmail has begun,” Polovich said.

Attacks around nuclear facilities in Ukraine have spurred calls from Kyiv and its Western allies to demilitarize areas surrounding the complexes.

AFP reporters on Tuesday saw a deep crater strewn with shell fragments a few hundred meters from the Pivdennoukrainsk plant during a press trip organized by the Ukrainian nuclear energy agency Energoatom.

Pivdennoukrainsk is the third nuclear site to be affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine launched in late February.