Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A dozen people were wounded, including a 27-year-old woman and her nine-month-old baby, in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, its governor said on Sunday.
“The Kherson region experienced another terrible night,” governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Meanwhile, UN and local investigators are searching for answers at the site of a Russian missile strike on the small Ukrainian village of Hroza in Kharkiv oblast killed 52 people.
The investigators have come to the preliminary conclusion that nearly all those killed were civilians, according to a UN statement shared with the Associated Press.
Local residents have begun to bury those killed, after the missile obliterated the village’s only cafe as people gathered for a dead soldier’s wake.
In other news:
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken about the situation in Israel, drawing parallels with the war in Ukraine by stating that “Israel’s right to self-defence is unquestionable”. He said his government had set up an operational headquarters to aid any Ukrainians in Israel. Officials have estimated that about 15,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to Israel. While having sent tons of humanitarian aid, Netanyahu has consistently refused to supply weapons to Kyiv.
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A United Russia party official in the Russian-held town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson oblast was killed in a car explosion on Saturday, the Russian-installed regional governor said. Vladimir Malov, executive secretary of the town branch of Russia’s governing United Russia party, died in hospital, Vladimir Saldo said in a post on his Telegram channel. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility.
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Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former leader, has called for a civil war in the US, as he said a civil war would be the only thing that could stop “America’s manic passion for sparking conflicts everywhere on the planet”.
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Train traffic between North Korea and Russia has dramatically increased after the recent summit between leaders Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, indicating a “likely” transfer of arms, according to a new report by Washington-based analysts. High-resolution satellite imagery reveals at least 70 freight cars at North Korea’s border Tumangang rail facility, the Beyond Parallel group said on Friday, a number described as “unprecedented”.
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One woman was killed and two more people injured in the Russian shelling of the village of Bilenke in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration said on Telegram. A private house and outbuildings were damaged in the attack, said Yuriy Malashko.
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A man was killed in shelling of the village of Urazovo in Russia’s Belgorod oblast, the regional governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the attack came from Ukrainian forces, but the Guardian could not independently verify those claims. Ukraine typically does not claim responsibility for strikes on Russia. A utility building, a storage facility and one social facility were destroyed in the attack, Gladkov said.
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Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organisations in Vienna, posted on X that Russia is planning to revoke ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation. “The aim is to be on equal footing with the US, who signed the treaty but didn’t ratify it,” he said. “Revocation doesn’t mean the intention to resume nuclear tests.” The US warned that Russia revoking its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation will endanger “the global norm” against nuclear test blasts.
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Russian forces launched an overnight missile strike on Ukraine’s southern Odesa oblast, damaging port infrastructure, the regional governor said early on Saturday. Four people were wounded in the strike, which hit a boarding house and a portside grain facility, said Oleh Kiper. Debris from the rockets and the blast wave caused a fire in the garage cooperative and damaged several apartment buildings.
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Russia’s defence ministry says it destroyed two Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missiles, thwarting attacks it said Kyiv attempted four hours apart on the Crimean Peninsula on Saturday. Reuters could not verify the reports by the ministry, which did not say where exactly the missiles were shot down over Crimea.
Key events
Ukraine’s governor Oleksandr Prokudin says a 27-year-old woman and her nine-month-old baby are among those wounded in another Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, Reuters reports.
“The Kherson region experienced another terrible night,” Prokudin wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
The woman and the infant were hospitalised with moderate wounds, he said, adding that a 33-year-old Red Cross medic was also wounded. Several houses and gas pipelines were damaged in the attack.
Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces carried out 59 attacks on Kherson, the region’s administration said on Telegram, including 19 instances of shelling of Kherson city, the region’s administrative centre.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
More on that strike in the small Ukrainian village of Hroza in Kharkiv, which is one of the deadliest in Ukraine since the start of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion last year.
The strike on Thursday turned the sole cafe and store in the village to rubble and killed nearly 52 people gathered for a dead soldier’s wake, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other top officials in Kyiv.
UN and local investigators are searching for answers in the village as the town is trying to fathom why and how the wake was targeted. Only six people in the cafe survived.
According to a UN statement shared with the the Associated Press, representatives from a UN monitoring mission have come to the preliminary conclusion that nearly all those killed were civilians.
Representatives from the United Nations monitoring mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) spent much of the day speaking with local residents and survivors in Hroza, according to the statement.
“My initial conversations with local residents and survivors indicate that virtually all those killed were civilians and that the target itself, a busy village cafe and store, was also clearly civilian,” Danielle Bell, who led the team that visited Hroza on Saturday, was cited as saying in the UN statement.
“What happened here is yet another tragic reminder of the deadly impact Russia’s invasion has had on Ukraine’s civilians,” Bell added.
Also on Saturday, local residents began burying their lost friends, with the funeral of a married couple who had attended the wake before the missile strike cut it short. The initial wake was for Andriy Kozyr, a soldier from Hroza, who died last winter fighting Russia’s invading forces in eastern Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian news reports, he was initially laid to rest elsewhere in Ukraine, as his native village remained under Russian occupation. Kozyr’s family decided to rebury him in Hroza more than 15 months following his death, after DNA tests confirmed his identity, and the cafe reopened especially to let residents honour his memory.
His son Dmytro Kozyr, also a soldier, was among those who died in the attack, alongside his wife Nina, who was just days short of her 21st birthday. As of Saturday, Ukrainian law enforcement and the regional prosecutor’s office put the number of victims at 52.
See below some of the photos that have come in from the burials and the village.
Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A dozen people were wounded, including a 27-year-old woman and her nine-month-old baby, in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, its governor said on Sunday.
“The Kherson region experienced another terrible night,” governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Meanwhile, UN and local investigators are searching for answers at the site of a Russian missile strike on the small Ukrainian village of Hroza in Kharkiv oblast killed 52 people.
The investigators have come to the preliminary conclusion that nearly all those killed were civilians, according to a UN statement shared with the Associated Press.
Local residents have begun to bury those killed, after the missile obliterated the village’s only cafe as people gathered for a dead soldier’s wake.
In other news:
-
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken about the situation in Israel, drawing parallels with the war in Ukraine by stating that “Israel’s right to self-defence is unquestionable”. He said his government had set up an operational headquarters to aid any Ukrainians in Israel. Officials have estimated that about 15,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to Israel. While having sent tons of humanitarian aid, Netanyahu has consistently refused to supply weapons to Kyiv.
-
A United Russia party official in the Russian-held town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson oblast was killed in a car explosion on Saturday, the Russian-installed regional governor said. Vladimir Malov, executive secretary of the town branch of Russia’s governing United Russia party, died in hospital, Vladimir Saldo said in a post on his Telegram channel. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility.
-
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former leader, has called for a civil war in the US, as he said a civil war would be the only thing that could stop “America’s manic passion for sparking conflicts everywhere on the planet”.
-
Train traffic between North Korea and Russia has dramatically increased after the recent summit between leaders Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, indicating a “likely” transfer of arms, according to a new report by Washington-based analysts. High-resolution satellite imagery reveals at least 70 freight cars at North Korea’s border Tumangang rail facility, the Beyond Parallel group said on Friday, a number described as “unprecedented”.
-
One woman was killed and two more people injured in the Russian shelling of the village of Bilenke in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration said on Telegram. A private house and outbuildings were damaged in the attack, said Yuriy Malashko.
-
A man was killed in shelling of the village of Urazovo in Russia’s Belgorod oblast, the regional governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the attack came from Ukrainian forces, but the Guardian could not independently verify those claims. Ukraine typically does not claim responsibility for strikes on Russia. A utility building, a storage facility and one social facility were destroyed in the attack, Gladkov said.
-
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organisations in Vienna, posted on X that Russia is planning to revoke ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation. “The aim is to be on equal footing with the US, who signed the treaty but didn’t ratify it,” he said. “Revocation doesn’t mean the intention to resume nuclear tests.” The US warned that Russia revoking its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation will endanger “the global norm” against nuclear test blasts.
-
Russian forces launched an overnight missile strike on Ukraine’s southern Odesa oblast, damaging port infrastructure, the regional governor said early on Saturday. Four people were wounded in the strike, which hit a boarding house and a portside grain facility, said Oleh Kiper. Debris from the rockets and the blast wave caused a fire in the garage cooperative and damaged several apartment buildings.
-
Russia’s defence ministry says it destroyed two Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missiles, thwarting attacks it said Kyiv attempted four hours apart on the Crimean Peninsula on Saturday. Reuters could not verify the reports by the ministry, which did not say where exactly the missiles were shot down over Crimea.
