Ukraine war briefing: Russian barrage hits Ukrainian residential and energy sites, killing at least 15

Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles against Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least 15 people and damaging dozens of residential buildings as well as energy infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said. In the central city of Poltava, a Russian missile struck a residential building, killing 11 people and wounding 16, including four children, Ukraine’s emergency services said, adding that 22 people were rescued from rubble and emergency crews worked well into the night.

In Kharkiv, north-eastern Ukraine, one person was killed and four wounded in a drone attack, the mayor said. Three police officers were killed during attacks as they patrolled streets in a village in the north-eastern region of Sumy, regional officials said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia used missiles, attack drones and aerial bombs in carrying out the overnight attacks on Ukrainian targets and they showed “we need more support in defending ourselves against Russian terror”. The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said Russian forces were “likely leveraging ballistic missiles in strike packages since Ukraine only has a few air defence systems suitable for intercepting such missiles”.

Russian forces struck a boarding school housing people preparing for evacuation in a part of Russia’s Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces, killing at least four people on Saturday, Ukraine’s military said. Zelenskyy said the attack destroyed the boarding school in the border town of Sudzha “even though dozens of civilians were there”. The Ukrainian military’s general staff said on Saturday said that as of 10pm rescue efforts were proceeding and 84 people had been rescued from the rubble or received medical assistance, with four of the injured in a serious condition. Russia’s defence ministry blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike.

An explosion at a Ukrainian army recruitment centre in the western city of Rivne killed one person and wounded six, police said. Authorities did not say what caused the explosion at 4.15pm local time on Saturday or reveal details on the casualties. There was no air alert over Rivne at the time, according to the regional governor’s Telegram channel.

On Saturday a man with a hunting rifle shot dead a Ukrainian army recruitment soldier and escaped with a conscript before both were caught by police, authorities said. The recruitment official was escorting mobilised men to a training centre and had stopped at a petrol station in the Poltava region when the incident took place. Police have launched a murder inquiry.

Moscow claimed its forces were pressing in on the key eastern Ukrainian city of Toretsk, whose capture would enable Russia to obstruct Ukrainian supply routes. Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday its troops “liberated” the village of Krymske in the north-eastern suburbs of Toretsk, in the Donetsk region. The claim could not be confirmed.

The US wants Ukraine to hold elections, potentially by the end of the year, especially if Kyiv can agree to a truce with Russia in the coming months, Donald Trump’s top Ukraine official has said. Speaking to Reuters, Keith Kellogg said Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections, suspended during the war with Russia, “need to be done”. “Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so,” said Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. But because of the Russian invasion, Ukraine is under martial law, which constitutionally does not allow elections. Trump and Kellogg have both said they are working on a plan to broker a deal in the first several months of the new administration to end the three-year-old war.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said excluding Ukraine from talks between the US and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be “very dangerous” and asked for more discussions between Kyiv and Washington to develop a plan for a ceasefire. Speaking to the Associated Press on Saturday, the Ukrainian president said Russia did not want to engage in ceasefire talks or to discuss any kind of concessions, which the Kremlin interpreted as losing at a time when its troops had the upper hand on the battlefield. Zelenskyy said Donald Trump could bring Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, to the table with the threat of sanctions targeting Russia’s energy and banking system, as well as continued support of the Ukrainian military. “I think these are the closest and most important steps,” he said, following Trump’s comments on Friday that American and Russian officials were “already talking” about ending the war.

The UN on Saturday condemned a Russian missile attack on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa that wounded at least seven people and damaged historic buildings. “Unesco condemns the missile attack on the historic centre of Odesa last night, a world heritage site, severely damaging at least two cultural buildings placed under Unesco conventions’ protection,” the UN agency said. “Our team is already at work to promptly support the urgent documentation of damage and identify with the Ukrainian authorities the required emergency interventions,” it said, adding that a Unesco mission would be deployed to Odesa.