Russia strikes apartment block in Kharkiv; Kyiv air defence units destroy 71 Russian drones

One firefighter was killed and two others were injured by a Ukrainian drone in the Russia-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, said the Russian Emergencies Ministry on Sunday.

Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed 71 of 80 attack drones that Russia launched overnight, said Ukraine’s air force on Sunday.

Russian strike on apartment block in Kharkiv injures 21

Russian forces struck a multi-storey apartment building in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Saturday evening, wounding 21 people and prompting an evacuation of some of its residents, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

Kharkiv, 30km from the Russian border, has been a frequent target of Moscow’s attacks since the Kremlin’s troops launched their February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour.

Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the Russians had deployed a guided bomb and that 60 residents had been evacuated from the building. An eight-year-old and two 17-year-olds were among the wounded, he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the strike and repeated his call for more weapons from Kyiv’s Western partners to defend against Russian strikes.

“Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities, and we are working to convince our partners of this,” he wrote on social media.

Further south, a Russian drone attack killed two people on Saturday in the city of Nikopol, said the regional governor.

In the eastern town of Kurakhove, one of the focal points of Russia’s slow advance through the industrial Donetsk region, one person was killed in a Russian artillery strike, said regional prosecutors.

Local authorities in the Sumy region said Russian aircraft struck energy infrastructure in the town of Shostka.

Sumy has been another frequent target of Russian attacks and lies opposite Russia’s southern Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion last month.

Firefighter killed by Ukrainian drone in Luhansk

One firefighter was killed and two others were injured by a Ukrainian drone in the Russia-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said on Sunday.

The drone’s explosives detonated when Vyacheslav Glazunov (33) was extinguishing a fire in the Novoaidar district triggered by fallen drones, the ministry said on Telegram.

In a separate incident, 10 civilians, including one local official and seven self-defence volunteers, were wounded in the village of Cheremoshnoye in Russia’s Belgorod region after a Ukrainian shelling, said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor.

Several Russian regions, including Belgorod and Kursk bordering Ukraine, established so-called territorial defence units to increase security and resist sabotage activity after Moscow started what it called a “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine’s air defence units destroy 71 Russian drones

Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed 71 out of 80 attack drones that Russia launched overnight, said Ukraine’s air force on Sunday.

Six more of the Russian drones were lost after being neutralised by Ukraine’s electronic warfare, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia also launched two guided missiles from occupied parts of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, the air force said. It did not say what happened to the missiles.

Russia says it will take no part in follow-up to ‘peace summit’

Russia would take no part in any follow-up to the Swiss-organised “peace summit” held in June as the process amounted to “fraud”, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Saturday.

Russia was not invited to the June meeting, attended by delegations from more than 90 countries, and dismissed its deliberations as meaningless without Moscow’s participation.

Zelensky has said he hopes to organise a follow-up meeting by the end of the year with Russia attending.

“This process itself has nothing to do with a settlement,” wrote Zakharova on the Telegram messaging app. “It is another manifestation of fraud by the Anglo-Saxons and their Ukrainian puppets”.

She said Russia was ready to discuss “truly serious proposals” that took into account the “situation on the ground” — an oblique reference to Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, though without fully occupying any of them.

Ukraine and its Western backers were “not thinking about peace”, she said, citing Ukraine’s incursion into southern Russia’s Kursk region, launched last month, and Zelensky’s persistent appeals for long-range Western weaponry.

On the eve of the June summit, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin set conditions for holding talks with Ukraine, including a demand that Kyiv abandon all four of the regions Moscow now claims as its own. Moscow has since said it can hold no talks while Ukrainian troops are in its Kursk region.

Zelensky has based Kyiv’s position on a “peace formula” presented at the end of 2022, including the withdrawal of all Russian troops, reaffirming Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders and a mechanism to bring Moscow to account for the invasion.

Zelensky says end of war with Russia depends on allies’ resolve

Zelensky said on Saturday that the end of the war with Russia depended on the “resolve” of Kyiv’s Western allies in providing needed weaponry and permission to use it.

Zelensky, speaking in his nightly video address, thanked his military for a new strike on an arsenal in Russia, though he did not identify the location.

He also said his meetings next week in the US were “crucial” to ensuring that Ukraine had the defence capabilities it needed.

“If we could direct all our precision towards defending our state, if there were enough missiles and permissions that partners could provide for this, the overall situation in the war would be better for our security.”

He added: “The answer to the question ‘When will the war end?’ is actually in when our partners’ resolve will not lag behind what we can do for our defence, our independence, our victory.

“Our clear strategy will be on the table of our partners. On the table of the president of the United States.”

Ukrainian officials said on Saturday their forces had hit two Russian munitions depots overnight, in the Krasnodar region in the south and the Tver region in the west.

Zelensky will attend sessions next week of the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

He has also scheduled meetings with US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is also the Democratic candidate for president. Zelensky has also said he hopes to meet her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Putin ‘was joking about support for Harris’ in US election

Putin was joking when he said Moscow was supporting Harris in November’s US presidential election, said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with Sky News Arabia.

Putin said earlier this month that Russia wanted Harris to win the contest in a teasing comment that cited her “infectious” laugh as a reason to prefer her over Trump. The Russian leader’s remark prompted the White House to say Putin should stop commenting on the election.

“It was a joke,” said Lavro, when asked how much the change in US president would affect Russia’s foreign policy. “President Putin has a good sense of humour. He often jokes during his statements and interviews.

“I see no long-term differences in our attitude to the current or previous elections in the United States, because it is ruled by the notorious ‘deep state’,” said Lavrov, without giving evidence for that assertion. DM