The focus of the fighting shifts to southern Ukraine.

Image Fleeing Occupied Territories by Russia, the drivers travel in a long convoy to Zaporizhzhia on Sunday. role="group">ImageNewly arrived Ukrainians at a transit center for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia on Sunday. — The main front of Russia's military attack on Ukraine appears to have shifted dangerously south of the country, risking disaster at Europe's largest nuclear power plant and sparking a possible decisive struggle for an important seized regional capital by Russia at the start of its invasion.

Initially focused on the north around the capital, Kyiv, a d then devolved into a brutal fight in the east involving months of artillery duels that cost thousands of lives on both sides, the war has entered a new phase, which each side hopes, decisive.

With the fighting raging around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, about 60 miles downriver from the nuclear power plant on the Dnipro River, the south is now where Russia and the Ukraine are concentrating their firepower - and their e hopes of averting a stalemate that could drag on for years.

Over the weekend, Russia used the territory around the nuclear plant, qu 'she entered Ukraine in March, as a staged motive for attacks on Ukrainian positions. It unleashed a barrage of howitzer fire on the nearby Ukrainian town of Nikopol, local officials said. a combat zone - scared the area's residents and raised alarm of a radiation hazard far beyond Ukraine.

In the at the same time, the Russian forces in Kherson are surrounded by the Ukrainian military. The precarious position of Russian troops, who were largely cut off from their main source of supply after Ukraine destroyed the last of four bridges over the Dnipro, has led to speculation about their fate.

Some reports released on Saturday said Russian commanders had already withdrawn from the city. A regional lawmaker, Serhiy Khlan, told Ukrainian television on Sunday that Russia was moving its command center from Kherson across the Dnipro to safer territory on the eastern bank. sources, however, said they saw no evidence that Russian commanders were withdrawing. Analysts have warned that Ukrainian politicians have an interest in exaggerating Russia's problems to rally morale and demoralize Russian troops.

But Russian forces in Kherson are clearly facing difficulties now that their supply lines have been compromised. And Mr Khlan said the only way for them to now reach territory firmly held by Russia on the east bank of the Dnipro was to use pontoon bridges or to cross on foot, without their equipment, on bridges seriously damaged.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">An all-out offensive on Kherson, long threatened by Ukraine but so far limited to attacks on nearby villages and warnings to Russian troops there are parked, said Mosc...