Four people were killed and five injured when Ukrainian forces attacked a bridge in south-eastern Ukraine’s Melitopol district, Russian-backed authorities said on Sunday.
Reporters from Reuters were unable to immediately corroborate the report.
The Russian-installed head of the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, wrote on Telegram that a rocket had been launched from a Himars system at a railway bridge across the Molochna river.
“At this time, renovation work was under way at the facility. According to preliminary data, as a result of the shelling, four people from the railway brigade were killed, five were injured, they are receiving the necessary medical care,” he said.
Zaporizhzhia region, which includes Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, has been partially occupied by Russia since the start of the invasion.
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Summary
It is just after 6pm in Kyiv, here is what you might have missed:
Three people are dead and five others have been injured after Russian shelling in the port city of Kherson, claim local authorities. The Kherson regional military administration said on its Telegram channel that Russian forces targeted a hospital, school, bus station, post office, bank and residential buildings. It said there were eight victims, three dead and five injured.
Mourners gathered in Kyiv today to commemorate a British volunteer killed while on a rescue mission from the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar. British voluntary aid worker Andrew Bagshaw, for whom the service was held, and fellow volunteer Chris Parry, were killed during an attempted humanitarian evacuation. Several dozen mourners, including fellow volunteers who knew Bagshaw, came to express their condolences at a small church on the territory of Kyiv’s ancient St Sophia cathedral for a service led by an Orthodox priest.
Russia’s ministry of education has provided further details on plans to include basic military training in the country’s secondary schools, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said today. In its daily intelligence update, the MoD said that the module “will include training with AK series assault rifles and hand grenades, military drill and salutes”. It added that the initiatives, which come into force in September, are most likely a deliberate “evocation of the Soviet Union” as similar training took place in schools up until 1993.
Ukraine has imposed sanctions against 182 Russian and Belarusian companies, and three individuals, in the latest of a series of steps since the start of the invasion that Ukraine has taken to block Moscow’s and Minsk’s connections to Ukraine. The sanctioned companies chiefly engage in the transportation of goods, vehicle leasing and chemical production, according to the list published by the Ukraine’s national security and defence council.
US military officials are reportedly urging the Pentagon to supply F-16 jets to Ukraine so the country is better able to defend itself from Russian missiles and drones.
Ukraine’s military and Russia’s Wagner private military group are both claiming to have control in the area of Blahodatne in the eastern part of the Donetsk region. “Units of Ukraine’s Defence Forces repelled the attacks of the occupiers in the areas of … Blahodatne … in the Donetsk region,” Ukraine’s armed forces said in its daily morning report, adding its forces also repelled attacks in 13 other settlements in the Donetsk region. The Wagner group, designated by the US as transnational criminal organisation, said on the Telegram messaging app on Saturday that its units had taken control of Blahodatne.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said ahead of an EU-Ukraine summit next week that Ukraine had unconditional support from the bloc and needed to prevail against Russian attacks to defend European values. “We stand by Ukraine’s side without any ifs and buts. Ukraine is fighting for our shared values, it is fighting for the respect of international law and for the principles of democracy and that is why Ukraine has to win this war.”
A Russian strike killed three people in a residential district of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka on Saturday, the regional governor said. Fourteen other people were wounded in the attack, which also damaged four apartment buildings and a hotel. According to Ukraine’s defence ministry, Russia carried out attacks on Konstantynivka with multiple rocket launchers.
Russia accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately striking a hospital in a Russian-held area of eastern Ukraine on Saturday. It said a strike killed 14 people and wounded 24 patients and medical staff. The strike hit a hospital in the Russian-held settlement of Novoaidar and was carried out using a US-supplied Himars rocket launch system, the Russian defence ministry said. The claims could not be independently verified, AP reported.
Kyiv and its western allies are engaged in “fast-track” talks on the possibility of equipping Ukraine with long-range missiles and military aircraft, a top aide to Ukraine’s president says, AP reported. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukraine’s supporters in the west “understand how the war is developing” and the need to supply planes capable of providing cover for the armoured fighting vehicles that the US and Germany have pledged.
Ukraine said on Friday it would take its pilots about half a year to train for combat in western fighter jets such as US F-16s, as Kyiv steps up its campaign to secure fourth-generation warplanes. Ukraine got a huge boost this week when Germany and the US announced plans to provide heavy tanks to Kyiv, which is now hoping the west will also provide long-range missiles and fighter jets.
North Korea on Saturday denounced US pledges of battle tanks, claiming Washington was “further crossing the red line” to win hegemony by proxy war, Reuters quoted state media KCNA reporting. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, made the remarks in a statement, saying that North Korea will “stand in the same trench” as Russia against the US.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, will hold a meeting with Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador to Moscow, early next week, the RIA news agency reported.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday redoubled his efforts to stop Russian athletes participating the 2024 Olympics, saying they would try to justify the war against Ukraine if allowed to compete. Zelenskiy said on Friday that Ukraine would launch an international campaign to keep Russia out of the summer Games, which will be held in Paris. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Friday that any attempt to squeeze Moscow out of international sport because of what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine was “doomed to fail”.
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