At least 47 people, including five children, were injured when Russian missiles attacked a shopping mall and events complex in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sunday, officials said.
Earlier in the day, Russia said Kiev had carried out its biggest drone attack against it since the full-scale war began, targeting power plants and an oil refinery as Moscow’s forces advanced towards a key city in eastern Ukraine.
Following the Kharkiv attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again urged his allies to allow Kiev to fire Western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory, and reduce the military threat posed by Russia.
The fighting comes at a critical juncture in the two-and-a-half-year-long conflict, with Russia continuing its offensive in eastern Ukraine and trying to push back Ukrainian troops who suddenly crossed into the western border on August 6.
Last week, Russia launched its deadliest air strikes of the war on Ukraine, hitting a number of targets including energy facilities.
Moscow, which denies targeting civilians, says damaging Ukraine’s energy system is a legitimate military goal. Its drone and missile attacks have killed thousands of civilians since the conflict began in February 2022.
Ukraine, where a domestic drone industry is expanding rapidly, has stepped up its attacks on Russian energy, military and transport infrastructure.
Kiev is pressing the United States and other allies to allow the use of more powerful Western weapons to inflict greater damage inside Russia and hit Moscow’s ability to attack Ukraine.
“All necessary forces in the world must be brought in to stop this terror,” Zelenskyy said on his Telegram channel, in response to the Kharkiv attack, which Ukrainian officials said involved at least 10 missiles.
“This does not require extraordinary forces, but sufficient courage on the part of leaders — courage to give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself.”
In Kharkiv, rescue workers and volunteers carried injured citizens to ambulances outside a shopping complex. Broken glass and debris littered the ground and people ran to a metro station for safety.
Earlier, Russian officials said air defence units had destroyed 158 drones launched by Ukraine overnight, and that debris had caused fires at a Moscow oil refinery and a Konakovo power station in the neighbouring Tver region.
Kiev has not yet commented on the drone attack. Russia rarely discloses the full extent of the damage caused by Ukrainian air strikes.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine
Zelensky said that last week alone Russia had used 160 missiles, 780 guided aerial bombs and 400 attack drones against Ukrainian cities and troops.
He called on Telegram for “long-range strikes on Russian missile launch sites, destruction of Russian military logistics, and joint shooting down of missiles and drones.”
Kiev’s allies are concerned about how Russian President Vladimir Putin might react if their weapons are used against targets located within Russian territory.
Russia’s state news agency TASS quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying Moscow would change its nuclear doctrine in response to Western actions on the conflict. He did not elaborate on what those changes would include.
Russia’s current nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, states that it can use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack or conventional attack by an enemy that threatens the existence of the state.
Russia, which accuses the West of using Ukraine as a proxy to wage war against it, has previously said it was considering changes.
“The work is in an advanced stage, and there is a clear intention to improve it,” TASS quoted Ryabkov as saying.
Some Russian military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use to “pacify” Russia’s enemies in the West.
Advances in eastern Ukraine
In eastern Ukraine, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war is taking place, Russian forces are advancing toward Pokrovsk, a key military hub and transport link to cities and towns in the north.
Ukraine hoped its surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last month would force Russia to redeploy its troops and ease the pressure on its besieged forces in the east, but so far it does not appear to have had any such effect.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had seized two more settlements in the Donetsk region and were “advancing deep into the enemy’s defences”. One of them, Pytche, is 21km (13 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian officials said at least three people were killed and nine wounded in Russian shelling on the town of Kurakhove, 35 kilometres south of Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Sirsky described the situation around Russia’s main offensive zone in eastern Ukraine as “difficult.”
Ukrainian forces shelled Russia’s southern Belgorod region on Sunday, wounding 11 people, including two children who were seriously injured, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)