Satellite images show Russian artillery firing as homes burn near Kyiv

Ukraine told the United Nations nuclear watchdog that its technicians have started repairing damaged power lines that serve the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and that additional fuel for diesel generators that power nuclear storage facilities have been delivered.

The development comes after Ukraine said power lines for the closed plant were disconnected by Russian forces that had targeted the facility in February, soon after invading Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly asked for a cease-fire so that technicians could restore power and resupply the plant, where a major nuclear disaster took place in 1986.

Electricity is needed to cool spent fuel, ventilation and fire-extinguishing systems. The plant has been relying on emergency diesel generators, according to Kyiv. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said the Chernobyl plant’s disconnection from the power grid would not have a critical impact on safety functions.

“The volume of cooling water in the spent fuel facility is sufficient to maintain heat removal without a supply of electricity,” it said in a statement Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday compared Russia’s invasion to the Islamic State and suggested that diplomatic talks could not proceed if Moscow continued to bombard civilians and target government officials.

Earlier in the day, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Russian troops had detained Ivan Federov, the mayor of the southern city of Melitopol, and Zelensky denounced the move.

“The capture of the mayor of Melitopol is a crime not only against a particular person, not only against a particular community, and not only against Ukraine — this is a crime against democracy,” he said in a video address shared late Friday.

Zelensky said such tactics “will be equated with the actions of ISIS terrorists.”

“If you are becoming an analogue of ISIS terrorists, then what is the point of talking to you about something at all?” he said, as if speaking directly to the Kremlin.

The Ukrainian president said Russia had again disrupted the evacuation of civilians through humanitarian corridors but that 7,144 residents were allowed to leave — fewer than in recent days.

“These are 7,144 reasons to try to organize evacuations for Ukrainians from the besieged cities tomorrow and the day after tomorrow,” Zelensky said.

Few names summon up the same images of nuclear reactor ruin as the name Chernobyl.

The nuclear complex was home to four reactors when in 1986 an explosion badly damaged unit No. 4, blowing off its concrete lid, spreading radiation into the air and leading to the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents across an “exclusion zone.”

The other three reactors continued to function, with the last of them shutting down in 2000. The radioactive fuel was removed from the reactor vessels and stored in another building at the site.

It wasn’t until 2016, in a feat of engineering, that the unit 4 remains were covered with a massive structure weighing 36,000 tons.

But with war breaking out, Chernobyl has once again resurfaced in the headlines. First Russian forces occupied the nuclear plant, then on Wednesday they damaged a high-voltage line that connected the reactor site with the electricity grid.

Officials in Poland’s two largest cities have warned that they can longer cope with the waves of refugees from Ukraine.

More than 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, the U.N. refugee agency says, with at least 1.5 million arriving in Poland alone.

The mayor of Krakow, Poland’s second-largest city, said Friday that his government would begin sending refugees to accommodations in the surrounding province.

“In the past several days we have already received about 100,000 war refugees,” Krakow Mayor Jacek Majchrowski said on Facebook. “Krakow is slowly losing its ability to accommodate further waves of refugees.”

“We have been helping Ukraine since the first days of the war, but as a local government, we are first responsible for the citizens,” he said. “We cannot lead to destabilization in the functioning of the city.”

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said Friday that his city, the Polish capital, “remains the main destination for Ukrainian refugees” and that roughly 300,000 had arrived.

The situation “is getting more and more difficult every day,” he said on Twitter. Trzaskowski urged the United Nations and European Union to intervene and support Polish cities, local media reported.

Hundreds of multinational corporations have cut ties with Russia as its military assault on Ukraine intensifies, bolstering the effects of Western economic sanctions and redirecting their operations to serve desperate Ukrainian refugees.

But for the dozens of companies that remain in Russia, it’s getting increasingly difficult to leave, experts say.

Consumers watching the horrific humanitarian toll of the invasion have registered their disapproval of the businesses that remain in Russia, vowing boycotts on social media. But companies that leave now, experts say, could be seen as pandering, or worse: prioritizing profits and shareholders above protesting human suffering.

The corporate quandary is testing the mettle of some of the world’s most powerful brands, and the long-held business credo that countries that trade together don’t wage wars with one another.

Despite a cease-fire agreement between Kyiv and Moscow, Russian troops have continued to attack and impede evacuation efforts, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Vereshchuk said Russian troops did not adhere to a cease-fire when evacuation efforts were underway from Izyum, near Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. Evacuation efforts were slated to be routed through six other cities, she said.

“We failed to send buses,” she said in a video address Friday. “They were forced to turn around and go back to the city of Lozova, because Russian troops did not adhere to the [cease-fire agreement], and sadly at the moment it is impossible to evacuate local residents and deliver humanitarian cargo.”

Russian troops at a roadblock near Bilohorodka ordered 12 buses to turn around Friday, according to Vereshchuk, because the troops said they did not have an order to allow evacuation convoys to pass. That assertion, Vereshchuk said, was false.

“The Red Cross prepared a response, which showed that the Russians confirmed their readiness to open humanitarian corridors in this direction,” she said. “The [cease-fire agreed to by] the Russian armed forces on this route was violated.”

Ukrainian authorities have said for days that Russian forces have prevented civilians from evacuating despite the cease-fire agreement.

Russian forces on Friday also let fires burn, including in the city of Mariupol, where Vereshchuk said there will be efforts to try to evacuate residents Saturday.

She encouraged politicians and the news media to watch evacuations Saturday to see how they are taking place.

“Everything is impossible to do at once,” she said. “Russia, which systematically violates its commitments, is also the most important factor that does not allow to do what I and our team and the president and the prime minister and all of us very much want.”