Russian missile attack on President Zelensky’s home town kills one and injures more than

A Russian missile attack on President Zelensky‘s home town has killed a policeman and injured at least 52 others, with civilians pulled out from the rubble of their destroyed homes.

Ten buildings were damaged in the strike on Kryvyi Rih after a wave of Russian attacks overnight in the centre and the east of the country. 

Three of the people hauled from the rubble were left in a serious condition, with photos showing smoke spewing from the ruins of a building as rescue workers carried an injured person to an ambulance. 

In one image of the aftermath a group of men can be seen pulling at concrete foundations to reveal a police officer, whose face is bloodied from the blast. Other photographs show ruined cars coated in rubble and firefighters sweeping through the wreckage.

Three administrative buildings and seven residential ones, including a high-rise, were damaged in the attack, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. 

The police administrative building was destroyed and rescue workers pulled several people out of the rubble, Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s minister of Internal Affairs, said on Telegram. 

A Russian air strike killed three civilians and wounded four other people on Friday in the village of Odradokamianka in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson.

Three people were also injured in a missile attack in the eastern city of Sumy. 

Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry said one person was wounded in a Russian missile attack on Zaporizhzhia city in southern Ukraine.

Moscow also carried out its fifth drone attack this week on the southern Odesa region, home to Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and the Danube River that are used to export grain and other agricultural products.

Russia has intensified air attacks on Ukrainian grain export infrastructure on the Danube River and in the port of Odesa since mid-July, when Moscow quit the U.N.-brokered deal that allowed safe Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea.

Officials said air defences shot down 16 of the 20 drones fired by Russia overnight. The Southern military command said 14 drones had been brought down over Odesa region and two more over the southern region of Mykolaiv.

Oleh Kiper, Odesa’s regional governor, said a non-residential building had been damaged by debris from a drone but gave no further details. He reported no casualties in the region.

Also on Friday, a funeral was being held for an 18-year-old who was among 17 people killed on Wednesday in a Russian missile strike on a market in Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The attack, which wounded at least 32 others, destroyed the market and overshadowed a two-day visit by US secretary of state Antony Blinken aimed at assessing Ukraine’s three-month-old counter-offensive and signalling continued US support with the announcement of an additional one billion dollars (£801 million) in aid.

Britain announced on Friday that it will host a global food security summit in November in response to Russia’s withdrawal of a Black Sea grain deal and attacks on Ukraine’s grain supply.

The announcement came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in India for a Group of 20 summit, where he hopes to marshal international resources to counteract the war’s impact on the global food supply.

Sunak’s government said Royal Air Force aircraft will fly over the Black Sea as part of efforts to deter Russia from striking cargo ships transporting grain from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia is holding local elections in the part of the Kherson region it controls. 

Local elections are also being held in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

In Kherson, local residents and Ukrainian activists say election poll workers have made house calls accompanied by armed soldiers.

Ukraine has dismissed the elections, calling on its allies to condemn Russia’s actions and urging them not to recognise any administration created as a result of the vote.

Zelensky said on Friday that Russian air superiority was ‘stopping’ Kyiv’s counter-offensive, complaining of the slow rate of both Western arms deliveries and sanctions on Russia.

Ukrainian officials have expressed frustration at criticism over the speed of its counter-offensive.

‘If we are not in the sky and Russia is, they stop us from the sky. They stop our counter-offensive,’ Zelensky said, calling for more ‘powerful and long-range’ weapons.

Kyiv has repeatedly asked for planes to battle Russia’s invasion, but many of its Western allies have been hesitant.

Ukraine has for weeks complained about the slow process of getting US-made F16s to improve its Soviet-era fleet.

Arms deliveries to Kyiv and new rounds of sanctions on Russia were becoming ‘complicated and slower’, Zelensky added.

Ukraine relied on Western arms deliveries to launch its long-anticipated counter-offensive this summer.

It has acknowledged the advance has been slow due to heavily-mined territory.

But Kyiv has also reported some success recently.

It declared a strategic victory last week with the capture of the southern village of Robotyne, which it said would pave the way for forces to push deeper towards Moscow-annexed Crimea.

Zelensky on Thursday singled out military units in the east and south for their fighting and military officials reported some breakthroughs in Bakhmut and near the village of Robotyne.

Russia said on Friday it had repelled numerous Ukrainian attacks along the front line and inflicted hundreds of losses on enemy forces, challenging Kyiv’s assertion that Ukraine was making slow but steady progress in its counter-offensive.

Russia controls about 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea which it annexed in 2014 and a swathe of eastern and southern Ukraine which it took control of in 2022.