Nine days on from the start of the Russian invasion, a Ukrainian journalist describes the effects of the war and warns of the catastrophic consequences a nuclear explosion would wreak.

By Linda Bordoni

Tetiana Ogarkova is a journalist at the international section of the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center.

After the first week of war in the capital Kyiv, she decided to take her children and elderly parents to their hometown in the west of the country in search of safety. She continues, however, to tell the story and to facilitate the work of international journalists in the besieged nation.

Day 9 of the Russian invasion, she says, has brought further death, destruction, and fear, fuelled also by the potentially terrible and far-reaching consequences of a nuclear catastrophe.

Her warning comes in the wake of the shelling, during the night, of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which is now in Russian hands.

Ogarkova also explains that the war is in a new phase with the Russian troops using different tactics after having faced such resistance on the part of the Ukrainian soldiers.