Ukraine says Russian shelling targeted civilians in two cities in the north-eastern region of Kharkiv on Saturday. Ukrainian prosecutors said they were investigating as a potential war crime a Russian airstrike on a residential area of the regional capital Kharkiv in which six civilians were wounded, including a 13-year-old girl, 16-year-old male and an eight-year-old. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians but thousands have been killed and injured since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In Vovchansk, a city just 5 km from the Russian border and about 70 km to the north-east of Kharkiv, Ukrainian prosecutors said Russian shelling killed a 60-year-old woman and injured three other civilians. Two civilians – aged 70 and 83 – were killed when trying to leave Vovchansk by car, the Kharkiv regional prosecutor said. “The battle in the area of Vovchansk is ongoing,” Ukraine’s armed defences said. Only 100 residents remain in the town at the centre of Moscow’s grinding push that’s now largely in ruins.
Across the border in Russia’s Belgorod region, Moscow’s defence ministry said its forces shot down a Tochka-U missile fired by Ukraine. A similar missile caused a Belgorod apartment building to collapse last week, killing at least 15 people, Russia said. Late on Saturday, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone attack injured a woman and a man in the village of Petrovka. They were treated for shrapnel injuries in Belgorod, he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported successes by troops fighting a renewed Russian assault in the Kharkiv region. He said in his nightly video address that Ukrainian forces were on surer footing. “The occupier is losing its infantry and equipment, a tangible loss, even though, just as in 2022, it was counting on a quick advance on our land,” Zelenskiy said, referring to Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. His remarks come a day after he warned Kyiv has only a quarter of the air defences it needs to hold the frontline.
A divisive mobilisation law in Ukraine came into force on Saturday, as Kyiv struggles to boost troop numbers. The legislation, which was watered down from its original draft, will make it easier to identify every conscript in the country. It also provides incentives to soldiers, such as cash bonuses or money toward buying a house or car. Zelenskiy also signed two other laws Friday, allowing prisoners to join the army and increasing fines for draft dodgers fivefold.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces captured the village of Starytsia in the Kharkiv region on Saturday, eight days after the new Russian push in the area began.
Zelenskiy said his forces repelled an assault further south in the eastern Donetsk region around Chasiv Yar, a city seen as a key target in Russia’s campaign. “Our soldiers destroyed more than 20 units of the occupier’s armoured vehicles,” he said.
In the village of Stanislav in the southern region of Kherson, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said a Russian drone strike killed a man about 40 years old and injured a woman. The battlefield accounts could not be immediately verified.