Ukraine: Deadly new Russian strike on Kharkiv kills 10-year-old and grandmother; Zelensky aide pleads for more air defence before winter

Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said later that municipal workers had retrieved another body.

“Rescuers found the body of a 68-year-old woman – the grandmother of the killed 10-year-old boy and his injured 11-month-old brother,” he said.

Another 28 people had been wounded, he added.

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In an earlier statement, Synegubov described how two Russian missiles had landed in the city. One hit a road in the centre of the city; the other slammed into a three-storey building, causing a fire that sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that lies in a region bordering Russia, has been under persistent Russian shelling since Moscow’s forces invaded in February last year.

The strikes there came as Synegubov updated the death toll from Thursday’s missile strike on a village in the Kharkiv region that had killed dozens of people less than 24 hours earlier.

“Fifty-two people have died as a result of this missile attack because one more person died in a medical facility,” Synegubov told state-run television, raising the toll by one.

The Kremlin, responding to questions from reporters on the village strike, again insisted that Russian forces do not target civilians in Ukraine.

“Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Those killed in the village of Groza had gathered at a cafe for the wake for a fallen Ukrainian soldier.

The strike provoked outrage from Western leaders while the United Nations said the attack could amount to war crime.

The soldier being commemorated was killed a month after Russia invaded in February last year. He had been buried in the central city of Dnipro – away from his home village, which was then under Russian occupation.

He was reburied in Groza on Thursday morning. His wife and son, also a soldier, were both killed in the strike, officials said.

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Ukraine says Russian strike killed over 50 in one of the deadliest attacks of the war

Ukraine says Russian strike killed over 50 in one of the deadliest attacks of the war

Around 20 rescuers from Kharkiv city were cleaning the rubble from the destroyed cafe and nearby shop on Friday morning.

Oleksiy and some of his family came to the cemetery to mark out graves for his sister and brother-in-law killed in the attack – their bodies had been taken by police to Kharkiv.

“I don’t know when we will be able to bury them”, he said. “My brother’s body was preserved, but his wife’s head was missing”.

Nearby in the cemetery, a recently dug grave was covered with fresh flowers and a Ukrainian flag. It was the grave of 49-year-old Andriy Kozir, the soldier that villagers had gathered to pay homage to when a missile hit their cafe.

“Everyone at the wake died,” said 73-year-old Valentyna Koziyenko, who lived opposite the destroyed cafe.

“The strike happened just after people went in,” she said, adding that the blast from the strike had torn the roof off her building.

“How did the Russians know that so many people were in there?” said Koziyenko. “Maybe someone told them.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday described the Kharkiv attacks as “atrocities” that “prove that global support for Ukraine must be sustained and increased”.

Swathes of the Kharkiv region were captured by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion, launched in late February 2022.

Ukrainian forces clawed back much of that territory in a lightning offensive late last year.

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On Friday, Ukraine said it is seeking more air defence systems ahead of winter to protect its energy infrastructure from the type of Russian attacks that caused massive blackouts across the country last year, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff said.

Air defence support is needed ahead of a “very difficult” period “when Russia will renew shelling the critical infrastructure of Ukraine and energy objects, endangering lives of people”, Ihor Zhovkva said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “We need as many additional air defence systems, ammunition as possible”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised on Thursday to supply Kyiv with a second Patriot air-defence system after meeting Zelensky, while the Spanish government pledged six additional Hawk air-defence systems to help shield key infrastructure.

Last month, Russia launched the largest missile barrage to target Ukraine’s power grid since early spring, leaving parts of five regions, including the one around the capital, without electricity.

Zelensky travelled this week to Granada, Spain, to meet with European leaders to press for continued support against Russia’s invasion amid concerns about the continued flow of US aid. Apart from air defence, Zelensky also discussed exports of Ukrainian grain with his counterparts and Kyiv’s progress in implementing reforms needed to start accession talks with the European Union, Zhovkva said.

“We have all the reasons to expect that in the end of this year we will get the decision on beginning of the accession negotiations,” he said.