Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 718
A Russian drone strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, killed seven people overnight, including three children, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov reported Saturday. A Ukrainian prosecutor, her husband, and their three small children were among the seven killed after the strike hit an oil depot, triggering blazes that burned half a street to the ground, officials said. An elderly couple living in the same street were also killed in the attack that mayor Ihor Terekhov said injured 57 people and razed 15 homes.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Saturday that “Russian terrorists” would be held accountable for the Kharkiv attack: “It should be noted that in history, the perpetrators of such murders did not go unpunished,” he said.
Zelenskiy also announced five senior military appointments, filling out a rebooted team after he named Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi as the new armed forces chief. Zelenskiy said he spent the day meeting his military leadership and government and that experienced “combat commanders of this war” would be taking on new duties. The country is closing in on two years of war since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Nato’s secretary general called on Europe to increase its arms production to support Ukraine and prevent “potentially decades of confrontation” with Moscow, in an interview published by German media Saturday. Ahead of a key meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg insisted that “we need to reconstitute and expand our industrial base faster, to increase deliveries to Ukraine and refill our own stocks”.
Russia said on Saturday it had repelled an attempted Ukrainian drone attack on Russian “civilian transport ships” on Friday evening in the southwestern part of the Black Sea, a key artery for grain and oil exports from both countries. Civilian vessels on the Black Sea have not generally been targeted since Moscow ordered its troops into Ukraine in February 2022, but last July both sides said they would start treating ships headed to the other’s ports as potential carriers of military cargo.
Russia’s registration of candidates for the March presidential election has closed, TASS reported on Sunday, with a list including president Vladimir Putin and three politicians who all support Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The list did not include the Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin after the Central Election Commission barred him on Thursday from running. Nadezhdin said on Thursday he would challenge the CEC’s decision in Russia’s supreme court.
Centre-right Alexander Stubb of the National Coalition Party is the frontrunner in Finland’s presidential run-off on Sunday, according to opinion polls. Stubb, a former prime minister, won the election’s first round ahead of liberal Green Party member Pekka Haavisto. Both candidates are pro-European and strong supporters of Ukraine who have taken a tough stance towards Russia in their campaigns, after Finland joined Nato in April last year.