Three dead and dozens more injured after Kharkiv attack; Rishi Sunak says Nigel Farage’s Ukraine comments play ‘into Putin’s hands. What we know on day 851
Russian guided bombs shattered an apartment building in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing three people and injuring 52, including three children, officials said. Pictures posted online showed parts of the five-storey apartment building in ruins, with windows smashed, balconies wrecked and rubble strewn about a crater on the ground. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said four of those hurt were in serious condition. “This Russian terror through guided bombs must be stopped and can be stopped,” president Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram. Kharkiv lies about 30 km (20 miles) from the border with Russia.
Later, Zelenskiy called for more help to deal with the growing threat of such weapons. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Russian forces had used more than 2,400 guided bombs on Ukrainian targets in June alone, with about 700 aimed at Kharkiv. He said after the US Congress gave delayed approval of a big aid package in April, Ukraine’s replenished arms supplies had reduced the devastation and frequency of missile attacks and the same had to be done now to fend off these bombs. Ukraine, he said, needed promised military aid packages “without delay so that the agreements we reached with president Biden can be realised”.
The governor of eastern Ukraine’s partly occupied Donetsk region said Saturday that Russian attacks had killed five people and wounded seven the previous day. In the Russia-controlled part of the region, Moscow-installed governor Denis Pushilin said three people were killed and four were injured in shelling by Ukrainian forces Saturday morning. The reports could not be verified.
Ukrainian attack drones again struck Enerhodar, a town near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, after drones earlier in the week hit two of the town’s electric substations, a Russian-installed official said on Saturday. An official at the station had initially reported that it was unaffected, but Russian management said on Telegram on Saturday, before the latest drone strikes, that some “infrastructure facilities” including the transport department and print shop experienced disruptions after the attacks. Nuclear safety measures remained fully operational, it said.
A new barrage of Russian missiles and drones damaged energy facilities in southeastern and western Ukraine on Saturday, wounding at least two energy workers and forcing record electricity imports, officials said. National Grid operator Ukrenergo said equipment at its facilities in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region and Lviv in the west had been damaged in the second large Russian air attack this week. The Russian strikes also hit a gas infrastructure facility in the west of the country, the energy ministry said. Ukraine’s navy said it was the first time that Russian forces had launched missiles from the Sea of Azov rather than the Black Sea. Ukraine’s air defences intercepted 12 of the 16 missiles and all 13 drones launched by Russia, the air force said.
Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones that targeted Russia’s Bryansk region, the governor of the region that borders Ukraine said on Sunday, according to the Reuters news agency. According to preliminary information, there were no casualties and no damage from the attack, Alexander Bogomaz, governor of the Bryansk region said on the Telegram messaging app.
Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, has doubled down on his claims that the west provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine, refusing to apologise and insisting he is not an “apologist or supporter of Putin”. On Saturday, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer condemned the comments, with the prime minister saying it “plays into Putin’s hands” and the Labour leader describing it as “disgraceful”. Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, Farage said, “What I have been saying for the past 10 years is that the west has played into Putin’s hands”.
French prosecutors on Saturday charged two Moldovans suspected of painting coffins and a slogan urging an end to Ukraine war on the facade of a prominent Paris newspaper, a judicial source said. It was just the latest in a series of such acts in the capital in recent weeks.
