A 10-year-old boy and his grandmother have been killed and more than 20 people wounded after a Russian missile attack on an apartment block in Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials have said. Rescuers found the boy’s body under debris after the strike on the north-eastern city’s densely populated downtown area early on Friday. Two Iskander missiles hit the flats in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called another act of “Russian terror”.
The death toll from a Russian missile strike on Hroza village in Kharkiv province the previous day rose to 52 on Friday after another victim died overnight in hospital, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said. A missile slammed into a cafe and grocery store in the village on Thursday as people gathered to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Separately, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said people from every family in Hroza had been affected by the attack.
Russian airstrikes also damaged grain and port infrastructure in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine early on Friday, Ukrainian officials said.
The head of an international watchdog on nuclear tests has raised concern about Russian intentions after remarks by President Vladimir Putin, who said Moscow could withdraw its ratification of a global ban on testing. “It would be concerning and deeply unfortunate if any state signatory were to reconsider its ratification of the CTBT,” Robert Floyd, the executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, said.
Moldova’s pro-European president, Maia Sandu, said Russia’s Wagner paramilitary force was the main force behind an attempt to foment a coup against her. She told the Financial Times in an interview published on Friday that Wagner’s late leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was behind the bid to overthrow her and that Moscow remained engaged in attempts to destabilise the country, located between Ukraine and EU member Romania, notably by funnelling money into Moldova to bribe voters in next month’s local elections.
European leaders rallied around the Ukrainian president in the face of US jitters over defence funding. The gathering at the European political community (EPC) summit in Granada, Spain, gave leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and British prime minister Rishi Sunak a chance to restate their commitment to Ukraine after political turbulence in the US and Europe raised questions about continued support.
Russia is seeking re-election to the UN’s top human rights body next week in what is seen as a crucial test of western efforts to keep Moscow diplomatically isolated over its invasion of Ukraine. Some diplomats are reported to have said Russia has a reasonable chance of getting voted back on to the UN Human Rights Council in Tuesday’s secret ballot, 18 months after it was ousted in a US-led drive.
The US said on Friday it was expelling two Russian diplomats – a retaliatory step after Moscow kicked out two American diplomats last month.
Sweden will send Ukraine a new military support package worth 2.2bn crowns ($199m), consisting mainly of ammunition and spare parts to earlier donated systems, Swedish defence minister Pål Jonson said on Friday.
