Russia-Ukraine war: Putin fires wave of drones at Odesa as wake bombing condemned

UN Security Council members from around the world have condemned Russia’s bombing of a village wake that killed 52 people.

Hroza, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, lost over 15 per cent of its 300 population when a cafe holding a memorial service for a Ukrainian soldier was targeted by a Russian Iskander ballistic missile on Thursday.

“This is one of the deadliest strikes by Russia against Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion last year,” said US deputy ambassador Robert Wood in Monday’s UN Security Council meeting, as he stressed his country’s support for investigators gathering possible evidence of war crimes.

Albania’s UN ambassador Ferit Hoxha, this month’s council president who presided at the meeting, said the missile strike and deaths in Hroza underscore again “the terrible price civilians are paying 20 months after the Russians invaded”.

He said Russia may deny responsibility, but it started and is continuing a war and committing “horrible crimes,” and “it has also broken the universal ancestral law of absolute respect for those mourning”.

China’s deputy UN ambassador Geng Shuang, whose country is a close ally of Russia, said Beijing finds the heavy civilian casualties in the attack on the village “concerning”.

Russia launched 36 Iranian-made attack drones against southern Ukraine overnight, damaging infrastructure in the Odesa region, authorities said.

The strikes targeted the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, the Ukrainian military reported, adding that air defence systems destroyed 27 drones.

Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said unspecified “logistics infrastructure” had been struck but that no injuries were reported.

Reuters could not independently verify the information. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Russian forces have carried out regular missile and drone strikes on infrastructure in southern Ukraine in recent weeks and months, targeting port facilities in particular.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely focus on “the theme of Russia as a separate civilisation” in the upcoming elections next year.

While Putin has not announced his intention to run in the election, which will take place next March, it is believed that he will not step down.

The British Ministry of Defence, in its latest intelligence update, said they expect the autocrat to focus his election efforts on further inculcating the “need of defence from external enemies” in Russia’s population.

You can read their full report below.

Three civilians have been injured after a Russian missile struck their small village in northeast Ukraine, the local governor has reported.

Two 45-year-old women and a 34-year-old man were injured following a strike on the village of Veliky Burluk in the Kupyan district, Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv Oblast, said.

The strike happened roughly 45 miles northeast of Hroza, where more than 50 civilians were killed by a similar Russian strike last week.

Relatives of victims killed in a strike on Groza earlier this month were pictured weeping and hugging during as coffins were made ready for collection.

A Russian strike on October 5, 2023, killed at least 52 people gathered for a wake for the reburial of a slain Ukrainian serviceman in the eastern Ukrainian village of Groza. Ukrainian Interior Minister said the victims had gathered to remember a deceased villager in Groza, some 30 kilometres west of Kupiansk.

A Swedish court on Monday released a Russia-born Swedish citizen charged with collecting information for Russia‘s military intelligence service, the GRU, for almost a decade.

Sergey Skvortsov, 60, is accused of “gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden and against a foreign power,” namely the United States.

Ahead of a verdict in his trial, which ended Sept. 28, Skvortsov was released with the Stockholm District Court saying that “there is no longer reason to keep the defendant in custody.” The verdict is due Oct. 26.

The attacks were repelled in five areas of the eastern front – Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Lyman, Avdiivka, and Marinka – along the 1,000km-long (600mile) front, the general staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its evening report.

Approximately 73 railcars were visible in the images from last week, whereas previous satellite pictures over the past five years showed about 20 railcars at this facility at the most.

The fall-out from Uefa’s plans to reinstate Russian underage teams to European competition is causing a huge split within the governing body, putting president Aleksander Ceferin under immense pressure to “revisit” the issue at this week’s Executive Committee meeting.

The controversy has already caused the confederation vice-president Karl-Erik Nilsson to resign as boss of the Swedish Sports Confederation and led Denmark to become the latest association to say they will not play Russian sides to go with England, Ireland and Ukraine.

The Independent has been told that there is tension within some national associations that didn’t immediately reject the idea out of hand.