Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow hit by second drone attack in two days; Russian strike hits college dormitory in Kharkiv | Russia

Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, has visited Russian troops in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, part of which is controlled by Russia, the Interfax news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Tuesday.

It said Gerasimov inspected a command centre and underscored the importance of preemptive strikes against the Ukrainian forces.

Officials in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said on Tuesday that drones hit populated areas of the city and one drone destroyed two floors of a college dormitory.

The chief of police in Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine, Volodymyr Tymoshko, said there were two night-time strikes – one on the college and one on the city centre.
One person was injured in the city centre, he told Suspilne, or public, television. The college building was empty at the time of the strike.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov spoke of three strikes, Reuters reports.

“One of the drones destroyed two floors of a dormitory,” Terekhov wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “A fire broke out and emergency services are attending.”
A video posted on social media showed the top of a building ablaze and smoke billowing upwards. Suspilne said the half the college building was destroyed.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the attack or determine the location of the site in the video.

Russian air defences have shot down “several” drones targeting the Moscow region, mayor Sergei Sobyanin has said, with one hitting a tower that had been struck on Sunday.

The Russian defence ministry said two drones were destroyed by air defence systems in the Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts near Moscow, while a third was jammed and crashed in the capital, the Russian state news agency Tass reported early on Tuesday. The ministry blamed the attacks on Kyiv.

Sobyanin said in a Telegram post that no injuries had been reported. “The facade of the 21st floor was damaged. The glazing of 150 square metres was broken,” he said.

Moscow’s Vnukovo airport was also temporarily shut and flights redirected.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.

Our top stories this morning: Russian air defences have shot down “several” drones targeting the Moscow region, mayor Sergei Sobyanin has said, with one hitting a tower that had been struck on Sunday.

Meanwhile, officials in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said on Tuesday that drones hit populated areas of the city and one drone destroyed two floors of a college dormitory.

One person was injured in the city centre, said Kharkiv’s chief of police, Volodymyr Tymoshko.

We’ll have more on these stories shortly. In other news:

• At least six people, including a 10-year-old child, have been killed and more than 50 people injured when Russia struck a high-rise apartment in Kryvyi Rih. Authorities said people were trapped under rubble. Oleksiy Kuleba, the deputy head of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, called for revenge, saying: “Every day, Ukrainian cities are under fire from Russian terrorists. Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kharkiv. This is only for the last few days.” He said targeting civilians was a sign of “the despair and defeat of the Russian Federation at the front”.

• Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said: “This is how the week begins in a Ukrainian city that just wants a quiet, normal life. Russia wants to take peace and life away.” She offered condolences to the victims and their families. The city is the home town of both Zelenska and her husband.

• Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza on Monday lost an appeal against his 25-year jail sentence, the RIA state news agency reported. Kara-Murza, who holds Russian and British citizenship, was jailed for 25 years in April for treason and spreading “false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine, Reuters reports. Britain added six new designations to its Russia sanctions list, an update to the government website showed on Monday, targeting judges and officials involved in the trial of Kara-Murza.

• Ukraine and Croatia have agreed on the possibility of using Croatian ports on the Danube and the Adriatic Sea for the export of Ukrainian grain, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said after talks with his Croatian counterpart on Monday, according to Reuters.

• Russian airstrikes destroyed an estimated 180,000 metric tonnes of grain crops in the space of nine days this month, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said on Monday.

• Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, said Russia lost 87 units of equipment last week, including 33 strongholds, 26 armoured combat vehicles and 15 tanks.

• The Kremlin on Monday described a drone attack on Moscow as an “act of desperation” by Ukraine after setbacks on the battlefield. AFP reported that Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said it had been “very difficult” for Ukrainian forces on the frontline since they launched their counteroffensive in June.

• Ukrainian forces have recaptured nearly 15 sq km (5.8 sq miles) of land from Russian troops in the east and south over the past week during their counteroffensive, a senior defence official said on Monday. Kyiv’s forces have now retaken 204.7 sq km in the south since they launched a major push back against Russian forces early last month, deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram.

• Denis Pushilin, the Russian-imposed acting governor of occupied Donetsk, has claimed that at least two people have been killed and at least six injured after a Ukrainian strike hit a bus in the city, which had been capital of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic since 2014, and which Russia claimed to have annexed last year.

• Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to have said in a voice message published on Monday that his Wagner group was not currently recruiting fighters but was likely to do so in future. Prigozhin said in the voice message that “unfortunately” some of his fighters had moved to other “power structures”, but he said they were looking to return.

• Saudi Arabia will host a Ukrainian-organised peace summit in early August seeking a way to start negotiations over the war, the Associated Press has reported, citing Saudi officials. One, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia was not invited to the talks in Jeddah.