Nine dead in Russian missile strike on Zelensky’s hometown – live

Russian forces deliberately starved Ukrainians in Mariupol as a tactic of war by targeting their water, food and medical facilities before taking the strategic port city in 2022, according to an investigation by an international human rights group.

Satellite imagery showing evidence of targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure in the city, including food distribution centres, was collected by Global Rights Compliance’s Starvation Mobile Justice Team, and relate to the first 85 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before the fall of Mariupol.

Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies have agreed to engineer a $50 billion loan to help Ukraine in its fight for survival that would use interest earned on profits from Russia’s frozen central bank assets as collateral.

Details of the deal were still being hashed out as G7 leaders gathered for a summit in Italy, but the money could reach Kyiv before the end of the year. That’s according to a French official who confirmed the agreement Wednesday ahead of a formal announcement at the summit.

Here’s how the plan would work:

Russia practiced the electronic launch of missiles as part of the second stage of drills on how to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, the defence ministry said.

“As part of the second stage of the exercises of non-strategic nuclear forces, the personnel of a Leningrad Military District missile unit worked out combat training tasks for covertly advancing to the designated positional area and carried out electronic missile launches against conditional enemy targets,” the defence ministry said.

“The personnel involved in the exercise navy crews carried out sea trips to the designated patrol area.”

At least nine people were killed and 29 others were injured after Russian forces launched new deadly attacks on Ukraine, just a day before the leaders of countries that are some of Ukraine’s biggest backers are set to discuss how to slow Moscow’s offensive.

The deceased included five children, officials said. Several civilians were wounded when Russian missiles hit an apartment block in Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown.

Zelensky said the strike has again proven that “Ukraine, together with its partners, must strengthen its air defences” — something that he has repeatedly appealed for with Ukraine’s Western partners.

“Modern air defence systems are capable of providing maximum protection of people, our cities, and our positions,” Zelensky said. “And we need as many of them as possible.”

The United States has agreed to send another Patriot missile system, two US officials said earlier this week. “Modern air defence systems are capable of providing maximum protection of people, our cities, and our positions,” Zelensky said. “And we need as many of them as possible.”

Below we have some of the latest photos from Ukraine.

The latest wide-ranging sanctions by western nations against Russia are a “paradigm shift”, a former senior White House official said.

These sanctions expose foreign banks to the risk of being cut off from the US financial system if they deal with key large Russian banks, said Peter Harrell, who served as White House senior director for international economics in 2021 and 2022.

“For the first time, the US is shifting towards something that begins to look like… an effort to set up a global financial embargo on Russia,” Mr Harrell said.

“The message here is really one to banks in China and Turkey and the UAE and elsewhere outside of the G7 they face sanctions for continuing to engage in transactions with the big Russian banks and other sanctioned Russian banks,” he added, saying this would likely spark a “major retreat” by those banks from Russia.

“That financial pullback, in turn, is probably going… to complicate the flow of goods from countries that are continuing to trade with Russia,” he said.

The Treasury accomplished this by increasing to 4,500 the universe of Russian companies and individuals who could trigger such sanctions from about 1,200, the senior Treasury official told reporters.

Russian forces deliberately starved Ukrainians in Mariupol as a tactic of war by targeting their water, food and medical facilities before taking the strategic port city in 2022, according to an investigation by an international human rights group.

Satellite imagery showing evidence of targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure in the city, including food distribution centres, was collected by Global Rights Compliance’s Starvation Mobile Justice Team, and relate to the first 85 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before the fall of Mariupol.

In a report on “Russia’s siege, starvation, and capture of Mariupol city”, the rights group said its investigators analysed reams of satellite imagery as well as pictures, videos, public statements and digital data to make the assessment. The investigation took about a year to complete.

Civilians who couldn’t escape “died silent deaths inside Mariupol”, Olha Matskiv, a Ukrainian legal advisor on the Starvation Mobile Justice Team, told The Independent.

The US has dramatically broadened sanctions on Russia, and now also targeted China-based companies selling semiconductors to Moscow, as part of its effort to undercut the Russian military machine waging war on Ukraine.

Among the steps, the US Treasury said it was raising “the risk of secondary sanctions for foreign financial institutions that deal with Russia’s war economy,” effectively threatening them with losing access to the US financial system.

The US Treasury is also moving to restrict the Russian military industrial base’s ability to exploit certain US software and information technology services and, with the State Department, targeting more than 300 individuals and entities in Russia and beyond, including in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Separately, the Commerce Department said it was targeting shell companies in Hong Kong for diverting semiconductors to Russia, taking steps that would affect nearly $100m of high-priority items for Moscow including such chips.

It will also expand its lists of items Russia cannot import from other nations to cover not just US-origin products but US-branded goods, meaning those made with US intellectual property or technology, a senior Commerce official told reporters on condition of anonymity.