Girl’s body pulled from wreckage and 22 injured after strike Volodymyr Zelenskiy blames on Russia
Hello and welcome back to our continuing live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a roundup of the latest developments.
A two-year-old girl has been killed in an airstrike that hit a residential district in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro and also left 22 people injured, officials said on Sunday.
Ukraine is ready to launch its long-awaited counteroffensive to recapture Russian-occupied territory, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview published on Saturday. The Ukrainian president said: “We strongly believe that we will succeed. I don’t know how long it will take … but we are going to do it and we are ready.”
Ukraine’s plans for the counteroffensive remained on track, the deputy defence minister, Volodymyr Havrylov, told Reuters on Saturday, despite the “unprecedented” wave of missile and drone attacks across the country in recent weeks.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive plan is “very impressive” and can succeed, Gen David Petraeus told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, adding that the Ukrainians were “determined to liberate their country”. Petraeus, who has headed the CIA and led international forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been in Kyiv recently, meeting Volodymyr Zelenskiy and others.
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has said Kremlin factions are destroying the state by trying to sow discord between him and Chechen fighters. He said on Saturday that a dispute between him and Chechen forces had been resolved. But the Wagner chief blamed the discord on unidentified Kremlin factions, which he calls “Kremlin towers”.
Two people were killed and two injured by Ukrainian artillery fire on Russia’s Belgorod region on Saturday, said the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. He wrote on Telegram: “Since this morning, settlements in the Shebekino urban district have been under fire from the Ukrainian armed forces.” Ukraine has denied attacking Belgorod, saying Russian rebels are responsible.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said he was ready to send fighters to the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine and has come under intense shelling.
Kyrgyzstan’s president has said his ex-Soviet republic is ready to work with the EU. Sadyr Japarov, whose country is an ally of Moscow, said on Saturday: “Kyrgyzstan is ready to work hand in hand with the European Union to resolve shared problems, encourage dialogue and find lasting solutions.”
