Russian shelling and airstrikes on southern Ukraine overnight killed a man and a nine-year-old girl in separate attacks, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, “Russians hit a residential area with guided aerial bombs,” killing the girl and wounding a 16-year-old boy, Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration head Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
One house was destroyed and several others were damaged by the blast, he added.
Photo: AFP
In a separate assault on the city of Kherson, a “66-year-old man sustained fatal injuries” from Russian shelling, Kherson regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
One person was wounded in a Russian drone strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, he said.
In Russia, Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 10 people in the Kursk region overnight, acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war have accelerated over the past few weeks, with both sides meeting earlier this month for their first round of direct talks in more than three years. However, the negotiations in Istanbul yielded only a prisoner exchange and promises to stay in touch.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said that his government did not expect results from further talks with Russia unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance, accusing the Kremlin of doing “everything” it could to sabotage a potential meeting.
“There must be a ceasefire to continue moving towards peace. We need to stop the killing of people,” he said in a statement on Telegram.
The Ukrainian leader also said he had discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a possible next meeting in Istanbul and under what conditions Ukraine is ready to participate,” with both agreeing that the next round of talks with Moscow “cannot and should not be a waste of time.”
Russia has said it would send a team of negotiators to Istanbul for a second round of talks on tomorrow, but Kyiv has yet to confirm if it would attend.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS