Russian strike on apartment block in Kharkiv injures 21

Russian forces struck a multi-storey apartment building in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Saturday evening, wounding 21 people and prompting an evacuation of some of its residents, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Kharkiv, 30 km from the Russian border, has been a frequent target of Moscow's attacks since the Kremlin's troops launched their February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour.

Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the Russians had deployed a guided bomb and that 60 residents had been evacuated from the building. An 8-year-old and two 17-year-olds were among the wounded, he added.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the strike and repeated his call for more weapons from Kyiv's Western partners to defend against Russian strikes.

"Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities, and we are working to convince our partners of this," he wrote on social media.

Further south, a Russian drone attack killed two people on Saturday in the city of Nikopol, the regional governor said.

In the eastern town of Kurakhove, one of the focal points of Russia's slow advance through the industrial Donetsk region, one person was killed in a Russian artillery strike, regional prosecutors said.

And local authorities in Sumy region said Russian aircraft struck energy infrastructure in the town of Shostka.

Meanwhile, one firefighter was killed and two other were injured by a Ukrainian drone in the Russia-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said on Sunday.

The drone's explosives detonated when Vyacheslav Glazunov, 33, was extinguishing a fire in the Novoaidar district triggered by fallen drones, the ministry said on Telegram.

In a separate incident, ten civilians, including one local official and seven self-defence volunteers, were wounded in the village of Cheremoshnoye in Russia's Belgorod region after a Ukrainian shelling, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor said.