At least 30 people, including three children, were injured when a Russian guided bomb hit a high-rise residential building in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine on Sunday.
“The rescue operation in Kharkiv continues. A Russian air strike. An ordinary residential building, a multistorey building, was damaged. There is a fire and rubble between the 9th and 12th floors,” president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messenger app.
He posted photos of smoke and fire billowing out of the windows of a multistorey building. All windows had been blown out.
Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said civilian infrastructure was also damaged.
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Kharkiv, Ukraine's second biggest city, is located near the Russian border and is constantly under attack from Russian bombs, missiles and drones.
“And the world must help defend Ukraine from Russian military aircraft, from dozens of guided bombs that take lives of Ukrainians every day. This terror can be stopped,” Mr Zelenskiy said.
Kyiv has said it needs to be allowed to use more powerful western-supplied weapons to inflict greater damage inside Russia and impair Moscow’s ability to attack.
Russia denies intentionally targeting civilians despite having killed thousands of them since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, Mr Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday.
Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack.
Mr Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped.
“So you lose a lot of people. You lose people because they are not in armed vehicles ... they don’t have artillery, they don’t have artillery rounds,” said Mr Zelenskiy. CNN said the interview had been conducted on Friday.
Mr Zelenskiy said weapons aid packages promised by the United States and European nations were arriving very slowly.
“We need 14 brigades to be ready. Until now ... from these packages we didn’t equip even four,” he said.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said Washington was working on a “substantial” new aid package for Ukraine.
Mr Zelenskiy is due to meet with US president Joe Biden this month and will present a plan for ending the war. The main elements are security and diplomatic support, as well as military and economic aid, he said.
The only thing Russian president Vladimir Putin fears is the reaction of his people if the cost of the war makes them suffer, Mr Zelenskiy said. “Make Ukraine strong, and you will see that he will sit and negotiate”.
Mr Zelenskiy will also reiterate to Mr Biden demands for Ukraine to be allowed to use US long-range weapons to strike military targets deep into Russia.
Kyiv needs this permission because Russian jets blasting infrastructure had begun operating up to 500km from the front lines compared with 150km earlier, he told CNN. – Reuters
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