A Russian guided bomb destroyed an apartment building in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Saturday, killing three people and wounding 52. Officials said the injured included three children. Photos posted online showed part of a five-story apartment building in ruins, with shattered windows, destroyed balconies and rubble scattered around a crater in the ground. Regional governor Oleh Shniekhbov said four of the injured were in critical condition. “This Russian terror with guided bombs must and can be stopped,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Telegram post. Kharkiv is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Russian border.
President Zelensky then called for more help to address the growing threat from these weapons. In an evening video address, Zelenskiy said Russian forces had used more than 2,400 guided bombs on Ukrainian targets in June alone, about 700 of them aimed at Kharkiv. He said that after the U.S. Congress belatedly approved a massive aid package in April, Ukraine’s arms supplies have reduced the damage and frequency of missile attacks, and it is now time to take similar steps to ward off those bombs. He said Ukraine needs the promised military aid package “without delay so that we can deliver on what we agreed to with President Biden.”
The governor of Donetsk Oblast, a partly occupied region in eastern Ukraine, said Saturday that five people were killed in the Russian attack. Seven people were wounded the previous day. In the Russian-controlled region, Moscow-appointed governor Denis Pushilin said three people were killed and four were wounded in Ukrainian artillery fire on Saturday morning, a report that could not be confirmed.
Ukrainian attack drones have again struck the Russian-occupied town of Enerkhodhar near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.A Russian official said Saturday that damage was growing after drones struck two electricity substations in the town earlier this week. Substation officials initially reported they were unaffected, but a Russian manager said in a Telegram message on Saturday, before the latest drone attack, that some “infrastructure facilities” including the transport sector and a printing plant had experienced disruptions after the attacks. He said nuclear safety measures remained fully operational.
A new barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks on Saturday destroyed energy facilities in southeast and western Ukraine. At least two energy workers were injured, officials said, forcing Ukraine to import record amounts of electricity. Ukrenergo, which runs the state power grid, said the second major Russian airstrike this week damaged equipment at its facilities in the southeastern Zaporizhia Oblast and in Lviv in the west. The Russian attack also hit gas infrastructure in the country’s west, the Energy Ministry said. The Ukrainian Navy said it was the first time Russian forces had fired missiles from the Sea of Azov instead of the Black Sea. Ukraine’s Air Force said its air defenses intercepted 12 of the 16 missiles and all 13 drones fired by Russia.
Russian air defense systems destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones targeting Russia’s Bryansk region, the governor of the region bordering Ukraine said on Sunday. According to Reuters, preliminary information indicated there were no casualties or damage from the attack, Bryansk region governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a Telegram message.
Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK Party, said: Farage has doubled down on his claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was provoked by the West, refused to apologise and insisted he was “no apologist or supporter of Putin”. On Saturday, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer condemned the comments, saying the Prime Minister was “playing into Putin’s hands” and the Labour leader was “disgraceful”. Writing in the Telegraph, Farage said: “I’ve spent the last 10 years saying that the West is playing into Putin’s hands.”
French prosecutors on Saturday charged two Moldovans with painting slogans and drawings on a coffin urging an end to the war in Ukraine. Graffiti has been vandalised on the front entrance of a major Paris newspaper, the latest in a series of similar attacks across the city in recent weeks, legal sources said.
