Closing summary
The death toll from a Russian missile strike on the village of Hroza in north-eastern Ukraine rose to 52 on Friday after another victim died overnight in hospital, the regional governor said. A missile slammed into a cafe and grocery store in the village on Thursday as people gathered to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier. “Fifty-two people died as a result of this missile attack. One person died in a medical facility,” Oleh Synehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, told Ukrainian television earlier. Separately, interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said people from every family in the Ukrainian village of Hroza have been affected by the missile attack.
Russia unleashed new airstrikes on Ukraine early on Friday, killing a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother in the city of Kharkiv and damaging grain and port infrastructure in the Odesa region in the south, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian lawmakers will consider revoking the ratification of a global nuclear test ban, the parliament speaker reportedly said on Friday.
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, Reuters reports. Some diplomats are reported to have said Russia has a reasonable chance of getting voted back onto the UN Human Rights Council in Tuesday’s secret ballot, 18 months after it was ousted in a US-led drive.
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, the Swedish defence minister, Pål Jonson, said on Friday.
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The US has expelled two Russian embassy officials after Russia earlier expelled two American diplomats from the American embassy in Moscow, the US state department said on Friday.
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