Russian-Ukraine latest news today: Missile explodes near Zelensky’s motorcade

A Russian drone strike in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy injured four people and damaged multiple buildings, including medical centres.

The Sumy administration said nearly 235 buildings were left damaged in Wednesday’s attack.

The Shahed drones also damaged a medical college, a kindergarten, a school and two other medical facilities, it added.

A Russian missile strike on a village in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region killed a 70-year-old man and injured seven other people, including four teenagers, local officials said on Wednesday.

In a separate incident in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, the top Moscow-installed official in the Luhansk region said five people were killed and three injured when a bus on its way to a cemetery was blown up by a mine.

It was not clear who was responsible for placing the mine. The official, Leonid Pasechnik, called it a tragedy and said an investigation was under way.

The United Nations said last month that its human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine had verified more than 10,000 civilian deaths and nearly 20,000 injuries in the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. It said the actual numbers were likely to be significantly higher.

At least five people were killed in the Russian missile strike in Odesa during Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and president Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the port city.

Mr Zelensky was with Mr Mitsotakis when the missile hit infrastructure close enough for the leaders to see the strike, with sources estimating the attack happened a mere 500 to 800-metre distance from the delegations.

“You see who we’re dealing with, they don’t care where to hit,” Mr Zelensky told reporters in the wake of the incident

.Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk confirmed that the attack targeted Odesa’s port infrastructure, killing five people.

Russia successfully attacked a hangar housing Ukrainian naval drones in a strike on the port of Odesa on Wednesday, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

“The goal has been achieved. The target has been hit,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine has made extensive use of naval drones to strike Russian ships in the Black Sea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that people had been killed and injured in a Russian attack on Odesa. Later a navy spokesperson told the Ukrainska Pravda media outlet that five people were killed.

A court in Russia has sentenced a journalist to seven years in prison for writing articles about alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Roman Ivanov, 51, was convicted for spreading “false information” about the Russian army under the country’s wartime censorship laws.

Ivanov shouted “Peace and freedom” as he left the courtroom after the sentence.

In his final statement before court at a previous hearing, he said: “Journalism no longer exists in Russia.”

“We must ask ourselves why we are sowing suffering and unhappiness all around us, why our country has turned into an avalanche of suffering and unhappiness,” he added, according to AFP.

Ivanov was fired from a local state-run TV channel in 2021 for reporting on alleged corruption and electoral fraud among other critical issues targeting the administration.

Ukraine has no evidence to suggest that the Russian airstrike near Volodymyr Zelensky’s motorcade in Odesa targeted the Ukrainian president, said Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the operational command south.

The president was in Odesa to meet Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, when the incident happened.

“What is happening is that Russia is a terrorist [state], and obviously, it continues its attacks on port infrastructure,” the spokesperson told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

“It in no way relates to any specific visit [by foreign officials] … it’s connected with the enemy’s methodical terror campaign.”

Wednesday’s strike hit one of the port infrastructure buildings in Odesa, she added.

Russia launched over 880 attack drones and over 170 missiles on the Black Sea port infrastructure in Ukraine‘s Odesa region since July last year, a Ukrainian navy commander said on Wednesday.

Moscow has stepped up attacks on port infrastructure since mid-July, when it quit a U.N.-brokered deal that allowed safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments via the Black Sea.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s motorcade was nearly hit by a Russian missile on Wednesday as the Ukrainian President visited the Black Sea port of Odessa.

Zelensky was with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis when the missile hit infrastructure close enough for the leaders to see the strike, with sources estimating the attack happened a mere 500 to 800 metre distance from the delegations.

“You see who we’re dealing with, they don’t care where to hit,” Zelensky told reporters in the wake of the incident, which killed five people, according to a Ukrainian navy spokesperson.

The Ukrainian military will stabilize the battlefield situation shortly and aims to form units for counter-offensive actions later this year, a top military commander said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian forces experienced a setback following nine months of mostly stable front lines, when the eastern city of Avdiivka fell into Russian hands earlier in February after months of devastating attacks.

Ukrainian troops were forced to leave several settlements neighboring the city due to Russia’s continued offensive amid its own depleting stockpiles of munitions. Meanwhile, a vital aid package from the U.S. has been stalled by Republicans in Congress.

“We will stabilize the situation shortly,” Oleksandr Pavliuk, appointed as ground force commander during the recent top military reshuffle, said in televised comments, “and do everything possible to prepare the troops for more active actions, and to seize the initiative.”

He added that current work was aimed at withdrawing military units that lost their potential and restoring them to later form a force for counter-offensive actions this year.