Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv and Kharkiv under deadly missile attack

Russian missiles have targeted Ukraine‘s two biggest cities, damaging apartment buildings and killing at least seven people after Moscow shunned any deal to end the almost two-year war backed by Kyiv and its western allies.

The Russian barrage included more than 40 ballistic, cruise, anti-aircraft and guided missiles, officials said. Ukraine‘s air force said it had intercepted 21 of them.

The attack injured at least 20 people in four districts of Kyiv, the capital, including a 13-year-old boy, according to Mayor Vitalii Klitschko. Officials said initial reports that a civilian had been killed in the Ukrainian capital were incorrect, and clarified that the wounded person was on life support in hospital.

In Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine, the attacks killed six and injured 48, including four minors, as the missiles damaged around 30 residential buildings and shattered nearly a thousand apartment windows in icy weather, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Russia used S-300, Kh-32 and hypersonic Iskander missiles in the attack, he said.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has released a slickly produced Russian-language video to try to persuade Russian intelligence employees to switch sides and work as double agents for Washington.

CIA Director William Burns said in July that disaffection among some Russians over the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies, and that the CIA was not letting it pass.

The video, released on the CIA’s official channel on X, tries to appeal to what it suggests are patriotic Russians working in the intelligence community who may feel betrayed by what it called corruption in elite circles and the poor way the Russian armed forces are equipped and supplied.

“Those around you may not want to hear the truth. But we do. You are not powerless,” says the video, the latest in a series of recruitment videos targeting Russia, before detailing ways to contact the CIA.

Accompanied by melancholy classical music, the video’s main, fictional character is an unnamed 35-year-old male employee of Russia‘s military intelligence agency who casts himself as a patriot who loves Russia and once served as a paratrooper.

“Do I have enough courage to confront this betrayal?” the video shows him saying, before he says he has realised the real enemy is inside Russia in the form of a corrupt leadership and elite.

Lithuania’s Defence Council has decided to initiate negotiations to buy Leopard 2 tanks from Germany, Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas told reporters on Tuesday, as the NATO member seeks to build a tank battalion.

The Leopard 2 is made by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, part of German-French technology group KNDS.

“Our intention is creating a tank battalion, but much will depend on conditions, such as what price we agree on. So I can’t name any details yet,” he said.

Following Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO has pledged to strengthen its presence on the alliance’s eastern border.

Lithuania, a neighbour of Russia and Moscow’s close ally Belarus, currently does not operate tanks. The new tank unit is scheduled to be combat-ready by 2030.

Germany has committed to permanently deploy a combat-ready brigade of about 4,800 soldiers in Lithuania by 2027, which will be the first permanent foreign deployment of German troops since World War Two.

It has headed the international NATO force of more than 1,000 troops in the country since 2017.

Russia’s foreign minister clashed with the United States and Ukraine’s supporters at a U.N. meeting Monday where Moscow ruled out any peace plan backed by Kyiv and the West, and China warned that further global chaos could impact the slowing global economy.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, claimed that Ukrainian forces have been “a complete failure” on the battlefield and are “incapable” of defeating or weakening Russia.

He told the U.N. Security Council that Moscow is always ready to negotiate peace, but he claimed peace plans presented by Ukraine and its Western “masters” are “only used as cover to continue war and continue getting money from Western taxpayers.”

NATO signed on Tuesday a $1.2-billion contract to make tens of thousands of artillery rounds to replenish the dwindling stocks of its member countries as they supply ammunition to Ukraine to help it defeat Russia‘s invasion.

The contract will allow for the purchase of 220,000 rounds of 155-millimeter ammunition, the most widely sought after artillery shell, according to NATO’s support and procurement agency. It will allow allies to backfill their arsenals and to provide Ukraine with more ammunition.

“This is important to defend our own territory, to build up our own stocks, but also to continue to support Ukraine,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

Italy will use its presidency of the Group of Seven major democracies to challenge growing perceptions that Russia is winning in Ukraine and that the West is tiring of the war, a source familiar with Italy’s G7 plans said.

Italy will chair the G7, which also groups the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Canada, throughout 2024 and will host a summit in June.

Laying out Italy’s priorities for the first time, the source said core issues on the leaders’ agenda would include conflict in the Middle East, food security, climate change, development in Africa, engagement with China and Artificial Intelligence.

As in the last two G7 presidencies, the war in Ukraine will also be a major consideration, said the source, who was not authorised to go on the record talking about Italy’s plans.

The West’s once-staunch wartime support for Kyiv has appeared to waver in recent months amid political wrangling in Washington and Brussels that has held up the delivery of badly needed arms and funding.

However, the source said G7 leaders were determined to show they remained fully committed to Kyiv and could not risk showing signs of weakness two years after Russia invaded its neighbour.

“We must change the narrative on Ukraine,” the source said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin had lost significant financial, military and diplomatic clout since the invasion.

Russia’s military is being forced to strip down fridges and other household appliances for parts as its invasion of Ukraine grinds on, a British representative to the UN has said.

The UK’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, James Kariuki, also told a UN Security Council meeting in New York that the war had set back the modernisation of the Russian military by almost two decades.

“Now Russia’s defence industry strips down fridges for parts. It orders its weapons from the DPRK [North Korea’s official name] in violation of multiple resolutions agreed in this chamber, under this Russian foreign minister’s instruction.

Its purchase and use of Iranian drones involves both states violating a Security Council resolution,, said at the UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Monday.

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed or injured by Russian air strikes and shelling since President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of soldiers into Ukraine nearly two years ago.

The Russian military does not target civilians when it hits objects in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Tuesday when asked to comment on what Ukraine said were deadly Russian strikes on the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that Russia had unleashed a mass air strike on the cities, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others.

Asked if the strikes were Moscow’s response to what Russia said was a Ukrainian artillery attack on the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday that killed 27 people, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters:

“No, you cannot say that. We are continuing our special military operation and our military does not hit social facilities and residential neighbourhoods and does not hit civilians, unlike the Kyiv regime.

This is what fundamentally distinguishes our military from the military of the Kyiv regime.”

Ukrainian forces said on Sunday they did not bear responsibility for the death of people in Donetsk and blamed Russia for the heavy loss of life.

Russia launched missile strikes on Ukraine‘s military production facilities and successfully hit all intended targets, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

The strikes were carried out with air- and land-based missiles against enterprises producing missiles, explosives and ammunition, the Defence Ministry said in a statement that Reuters could not independently verify.

Ukrainian officials said earlier that Russia unleashed a mass air strike on Ukraine on Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others. They said the early-morning missile attack mostly targeted the country’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv.