Russia on Saturday bombed a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, killing three people and wounding 52 as it stepped up renewed hostilities.
Four guided bombs hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is near the Russian border, Officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted video footage of the torn-off facade of an apartment block and a crater outside.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Russian terrorists have again hit Kharkiv with guided bombs,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram, announcing three dead as rescuers searched the rubble.
Fifty-two people were wounded, including three teenagers, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
Kharkiv Governor Oleg Synegubov had earlier said that “Doctors are fighting for the lives of four patients — two women and two men, who are in serious condition.”
He posted photographs of blown-out windows, and cars and a minibus damaged by the blast, which tore through the walls of flats, leaving tangled wreckage and rubble.
Rescuers worked with dogs, cutting through doors and dousing a fire in the flats near the city’s central bus station.
Bodies in bags were laid on the ground outside, while one dead woman lay at a bus stop, her bag by her side, an Agence France-Presse journalist saw.
An elderly woman with blood running down her face and legs was helped onto a stretcher as she protested she did not want to go to hospital.
“Only civilian infrastructure was damaged,” Synegubov said.
“Since the beginning of this June alone, Russians have used more than 2,400 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine already, about 700 of which were targeted at the Kharkiv region,” Zelenskiy said in a later statement. “This is calculated terror.”
Russia launched a new offensive in the region last month, taking significant territory, and has increasingly targeted Kharkiv.
Prosecutors said that Russia used its new UMPB D-30 SN guided bombs for the latest attack on Kharkiv, launched from the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.
Russia’s Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper wrote this month that the weapons are now being used in the Ukraine war.
They can be fired from the ground at long range, as well as from planes, meaning “it is almost impossible to anticipate” an attack, it wrote.
“This Russian terror with guided bombs must be stopped and can be stopped. We need strong decisions from our partners so that we can destroy Russian terrorists and Russian combat aircraft where they are,” Zelenskiy said.
In Zaporizhzhia, Russian artillery shelling also killed one civilian, the regional military administration said.
A policeman staffing a checkpoint was killed by a drone in the southern Kherson Oblast, police said.
Five civilians were killed by shelling in front line areas of Donetsk Oblast, Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Front line clashes were reported near the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where Moscow “continues to increase the pace of offensive actions, deploying significant forces,” the Ukrainian military said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said troops had improved positions in the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv regions.
However, the region had come under attack from Ukraine, said Denis Pushilin, the head of Russian authorities in Donetsk.
Three men working for a construction firm were killed by cluster munitions, he said.
In Russia’s southern Belgorod Oblast, a man was killed in the shelling of a farm near the border, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
SEE UKRAINE ON PAGE 9
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS