OUR Vladimir Zelensky call them Ukrainians exercise caution ahead of Wednesday’s celebration of the 31st anniversary of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

“We must fight for Ukraine’s victory, there is much more to be done, we must remain resilient and endure a lot, unfortunately a lot of pain,” Zelensky said in his daily evening address yesterday Saturday.

Ukraine celebrates Independence Day on August 24, six months after Russia’s invasion of the country.

Zelenskiy warned that Russian forces could use the event to carry out particularly vicious attacks.

“We all need to know that this week Russia may try to do something especially bad, something especially vicious,” the Ukrainian president stressed.

“Like our enemy. Already once every two weeks for six months, Russia has been doing something vile and terrible, ”he added.

A curfew in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, will be in place throughout Wednesday, regional governor Oleg Sinegub said. Typically, the city, a frequent target of Russian bombing, has a curfew from 10 pm to 6 am.

In his speech, Zelenskiy also indirectly referred to a series of explosions that have taken place in recent days in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for them, but analysts believe that at least some of them were made possible by new equipment purchased by Ukrainian forces.

“You really feel Crimea in the air this year, (you feel) that the occupation there is only temporary and that Ukraine is returning,” Zelensky stressed.

Also yesterday, a Russian missile hit a residential area in a city in southern Ukraine near a nuclear power plant, injuring 14 civilians, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.

An impact near the South Ukraine nuclear power plant and new explosions near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, raise fears of an accident, Ukrainian officials said.

According to the governor of the Nikolaev region Vitaly Kim, in Voznesensk, about 30 kilometers from the South Ukrainian station, the second largest in Ukraine, residential buildings and a five-story residential building were damaged, among the victims were four children.

The attack on Voznesensk “is yet another act of Russian nuclear terrorism,” said the Ukrainian state agency Energoatom, which operates Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants.

“Perhaps this missile was aimed specifically at the Yuzhnoukrainsk station, which the Russian military tried to capture in early March,” he added.

At the same time, Russia and Ukraine again exchanged accusations regarding the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye, which has been under the control of Russian forces since March.

Vladimir Rogov, a Moscow-appointed official in the nearby town of Energodar, said Ukrainian forces had carried out at least four strikes on the plant.

For his part, Yevgeny Getushenko, the mayor of Nikopol, which remains under Ukrainian control, said Russian troops had repeatedly shelled the city, about 50 kilometers southwest of Zaporozhye.

^{Sources: APE-MPE, REUTERS, DPA.}