Deadly strikes hit Russian, Ukrainian border cities

A Russian attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv killed seven people, including a 14-year-old girl.

Ukrainian rescuers help an injured woman to leave the site of a missile attack in Kharkiv. Picture: Sergey Bobok / AFP

Aerial strikes on Russian and Ukrainian border cities killed at least a dozen people on Friday, bombardments that came as Kyiv dismissed its air force commander in a major military shake-up.

Both sides also claimed to have advanced on the battlefield – Moscow in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv in its shock offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region – with the fighting showing no sign of subsiding, two and a half years into Russia’s invasion.

A Russian aerial strike on the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Friday afternoon killed seven people, including a 14-year-old girl, Ukraine’s interior minister said.

Emergency workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble late on Friday evening. Images on social media showed the top floors of a multistorey residential building ripped open and a fire raging after the strike.

At least 77 were wounded, including 18 children, the emergency services said. President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Kyiv’s Western backers to up their support after the attack, which officials said was with a glide bomb.

“We need strong decisions from our partners to stop this terror,” Zelensky said in a post on social media.

The fire in a residential building after the strike. Picture: Sergey Bobok/AFP

“We need long-range capabilities,” he added, referring to Kyiv’s appeals to allies to lift restrictions on the use of Western-supplied missiles inside Russian territory and deliver more longer-range weapons.

“We need the implementation of air defence agreements for Ukraine. This is about saving lives,” he added.

Belgorod hit

Across the border some 60km to the north, Russia said Ukraine had fired cluster munitions on the city of Belgorod and its suburbs, killing at least five and wounding 37 civilians, including at least six children.

“One woman and four men died of their wounds on the spot before an ambulance arrived,” regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a post on Telegram.

He posted a video showing a fire raging at a house after one of the strikes. The state-run TASS media agency posted pictures of a road in the city of Belgorod covered in strewn debris and twisted metal.

Both Belgorod and Kharkiv have been hit repeatedly with aerial strikes throughout the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in May launched a new offensive into the Kharkiv region which he said was designed to push Ukrainian forces back to create a “security zone” for Russia’s own border settlements.

Moscow’s troops also claimed Friday to have captured three more villages in eastern Ukraine – one in the Kharkiv region – as they press against Ukrainian troops facing manpower and ammunition shortages.

Ukraine also claimed on Friday to have advanced in Russia’s western Kursk region, where it is mounting its own surprise ground offensive, claiming to have captured 100 settlements and more than 1200sq km of territory since August 6.