Russia-Ukraine war live: Selenskyj calls for more long-range weapons after seven dead in Zaporizhia

Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s two largest cities on Sunday, with rocket fragments falling on a residential building in a Kyiv suburb and one person being killed by a guided bomb in Kharkiv.

In the Kyiv suburb of Obolon, the local military administration said that falling fragments of a Russian rocket had caused a fire yesterday and damaged balconies of a 14-story residential building.

Emergency services wrote on Telegram that five women had been treated for stress and Mayor Vitali Klitschko said ten residents had been evacuated.

Rescue workers posted a photo on the Internet showing at least four charred balconies.

The head of the Kyiv region’s military administration said rocket fragments had also landed outside the capital, causing injuries and damage, but no further details were given.

In the first weeks of the invasion in February 2022, Russian forces were prevented from advancing on Kyiv and redeployed along the 1,000-kilometer front line in the east.

Attacks on Kyiv are less frequent than on other cities, although the capital suffered a series of attacks in March. Kharkiv is regularly attacked, but military analysts say the frequency has decreased since the US authorized Ukraine to use its weapons against certain Russian targets.

In Kharkiv, which never fell into Russian hands in the early stages of the war, a guided bomb yesterday sparked a fire in front of a depot and killed a delivery driver.

The region’s governor, Oleh Synehubov, said nine people were injured, including an eight-month-old baby. Images posted online showed the depot and the trucks parked outside it badly damaged.

More than 28 months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces continue to carry out regular attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure.

Russian forces have used more than 800 glide bombs against Ukraine over the past week, President Volodymyr Zelensky said last night. Ukraine’s wartime president showed photographs of Russian attacks on the country’s besieged cities – Zaporizhia, Dnipro, Odessa, Sumy, Kherson, Donetsk and Kharkiv.

“This week alone, Russia has used more than 800 guided bombs against Ukraine. Against our cities and towns, against our people, against everything that makes life normal,” he said on X.

Mr Zelenskyy called for increased air support to intercept these bombs, saying: “Ukraine needs the necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs, including Russian warplanes, wherever they are. This step is essential. Clear decisions are needed to help protect our people. Long-range strikes and modern air defenses are the basis for stopping everyday Russian terror.”

Russian-appointed officials in partially occupied Donetsk, illegally annexed by Moscow, said a 4-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl were injured by Ukrainian artillery fire on Sunday. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said four of its employees also came under fire on Sunday while trying to extinguish a fire in the Kremlin-occupied capital Donetsk. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday that its forces shot down three dozen Ukrainian drones overnight over six regions in southwestern Russia. It later said a total of 72 drones were shot down on Saturday and overnight. Debris from one drone fell on a village in the Kursk region, blowing out windows and damaging roofs and fences, according to a Telegram post by regional governor Alexei Smirnov.

Ukraine has attacked the Russian regions of Bryansk and Kursk with at least 25 drones, the governors of the regions in southwest Russia said, adding that all air forces had been destroyed.

Russia’s air defense systems have shot down 18 drones over the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine, Alexander Bogomaz, the region’s governor, said via the messaging app Telegram.

He said the attacks came in several waves and drones were shot down in many districts of the region.

Alexei Smirnov, governor of the Kursk region, which also borders Ukraine, said on Telegram that seven drones had been destroyed over his region.

Both governors said there were no casualties or major damage in the attacks. Russian officials often do not disclose the full extent of damage caused by Ukrainian attacks.

Russian forces have captured the villages of Spirne and Novooleksandrivka in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the Russian Defense Ministry said yesterday.

The ministry said its forces had also improved their positions along the front line around the villages.

The Ukrainian military has not yet confirmed the Russian capture.

Zelensky called on countries helping Ukraine to further ease restrictions on the use of Western weapons to attack military targets in Russia.

“Clear decisions are needed to protect our population,” he said. “Long-range strikes and modern air defenses are the basis for stopping everyday Russian terror. I thank all our partners who understand this.”

Hours after Zelensky’s speech, Ukrainian officials said Russian glide bombs had landed near a post office depot in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in northeastern Ukraine, killing one employee and injuring nine people, including an eight-month-old baby.

According to a statement from the private postal and courier service Nova Poshta, which operates the warehouse, at least seven delivery trucks caught fire during the strike, at least three others and the warehouse itself were damaged, and one driver died.

Russian missiles struck a town in southern Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including children, and injuring dozens, local authorities said.

Ukrainian officials released photos of bodies sprawled under picnic blankets in a Vilnius park and of deep craters in the blackened earth next to the charred, twisted remains of a building.

At least 38 people were injured in the attack on Saturday evening, authorities said, and declared Sunday a day of mourning. Vilnius is located in the Zaporizhia region, less than 30 kilometers from the capital and north of the front line, as Russian troops continue to occupy part of the province.

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In his final address to his countrymen on Sunday, long-time Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called on his country to support Ukraine and international cooperation as a new, inward-looking government is due to take power in the Netherlands in two days.

“It is crucial that our country is embedded in the European Union and NATO. Together we are stronger than alone. Especially now,” said 57-year-old Rutte from his office in The Hague.

After 14 years at the helm of the country, he will take his experience in consensus-building with him to Brussels, where he will take up the post of the new NATO Secretary General later this year.

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Drone footage released by the Ukrainian military on Sunday appears to show bodies in a civilian area in the embattled city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine, which has come under heavy Russian shelling in recent days.

The attacks in the war-torn Donetsk region have prompted Ukrainian emergency services to step up evacuation efforts. Local officials said powerful Russian glide bombs had also been used in the city, the latest flashpoint on the eastern front, as Russian attacks continue to force overwhelmed Ukrainian front-line units onto the defensive.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia had dropped more than 800 glide bombs over Ukraine last week alone.

“Ukraine needs the necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs, including Russian fighter jets, wherever they are. This step is essential,” he wrote in an online post.

According to the state news agency TASS, Russia plans to send children to a summer camp in North Korea at the end of July.

This follows the signing of a strategic agreement between Russia and North Korea on June 19.

The children’s groups will take part in the camps in Sondovon, North Korea, accompanied by supervisors.

“We are now planning joint camp shifts… We are planning child exchanges,” said Grigory Gurov, head of the Russian youth group “Movement of the First,” according to The Kyiv Independent.