‘Kyiv needs US aid now’

ARussian attack struck a grocery store and a pharmacy in a Ukrainian village close to the border with Russia, killing three people including a 14-year-old girl, authorities said.

The deaths came as the Kremlin’s forces kept up their barrages of urban areas of Ukraine.

The strike on Lyptsi, some six miles from the border, also injured a 16-year-old boy and a woman, officials in the north-eastern region of Kharkiv said.

They did not specify what kind of weapons were used.

Another strike with guided aerial bombs “completely destroyed” a hospital in Vovchansk, a town that also lies close to the border in the Kharkiv region, injuring a man, authorities said.

With the 620-mile front line barely budging in recent months, Moscow’s army has kept parts of eastern and southern Ukraine under relentless bombardment as the war stretches into its third year.

The power grid has also been a common target.

That has prompted Ukrainian leaders to plead for more air defence systems and ammunition from western partners.

But most of Ukraine’s air interceptors, as well as artillery shells, are provided by the United States, where further funding for Kyiv has been held up in Congress.

The lack of artillery shells and air defences is leaving Ukraine at the mercy of Russian attacks, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said.

“Ukraine simply cannot wait,” Mr Stoltenberg said in Brussels.

“It needs air defences, ammunition and aid now” from members of the military alliance.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Kharkiv city is being devastated by Russian guided bombs that wreak wide destruction.

Almost one quarter of the city has burned, he said.

Kharkiv is near the border “and this allows Putin to terrorise the city”, Mr Zelensky told a conference in Greece via video link.

Ukrainian air defence forces destroyed 14 out of 17 Shahed attack drones launched by Russia early yesterday, a statement said.

The attacks destroyed energy infrastructure in Mykolaiv and Odesa, according to the governors of the southern regions.

Russia attacked the Odesa region with drones and missiles in two waves, said governor Oleh Kiper.

The first barrage included strike drones targeting energy infrastructure, and hours later missiles struck transport and logistics infrastructure, injuring two people, he said.

Meanwhile, rescue workers recovered the bodies of two more people, including a 13-year-old boy from the rubble of a building partially destroyed during a Russian aerial bomb attack in Kostiantynivka, eastern Ukraine, on Tuesday.

In total, three people died as a result of that attack, Ukraine’s emergency services said.

BOMBARDMENT: A funeral procession in Kyiv. Russian missile and drone attacks have tested Ukraine’s air defences.