Russia Ukraine war live: Baby among seven dead as Putin’s troops attack Kherson’

At least three people sustained injuries in Russia’s overnight attack on the port city of Odesa, the governor of the Ukrainian region said.

“As a result of the enemy attack in Odesa, several fires broke out from falling rocket fragments,” the governor, Oleh Kiper, said today.

“Windows in buildings were blown out by the blast wave.

Artillery shelling in the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnieper River killed a family — a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and 23-day-old girl — and another resident.

Two men were killed in the neighboring village of Stanislav, where a woman was also wounded.

The attack on Kherson province followed Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar’s comments on Saturday attempting to quell rumors that Ukrainian forces had landed on the occupied left (east) bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region.

“Again, the expert hype around the left bank in the Kherson region began. There are no reasons for excitement,” she said.

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces have been laying down landmines year after year in an effort to thwart any counteroffensive.

The Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov claimed that millions of explosive devices have been placed along the frontline which extends roughly 600 miles.

Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “Russian minefields are a serious obstacle for our troops, but not insurmountable.

“We have skilled sappers and modern equipment, but they are extremely insufficient for the front that stretches hundreds of kilometres in the east and south of Ukraine.”

Poland’s defense minister said Saturday that the country has increased the number of troops protecting its border with Belarus as a deterrent amid “destabilizing” actions by its pro-Russian neighbor.

Mariusz Blaszczak met in Jarylowka, in eastern Poland, with some of the troops recently deployed close to the Belarus border.

He insisted that the increased military presence is purely a deterrent move, not a hostile act, as Minsk and Moscow are claiming.

“There is no doubt that the Belarus regime is cooperating with the Kremlin and that the attacks on the Polish border are intended to destabilize our country,” Blaszczak said.

There has been further shelling in the village of Bilozerka on the outskirts of Kherson.

It comes after reports that shelling in Shikora Balka killed seven people, including a 23-day-old baby.

Air raid sirens were reported across the region for the rest of Sunday.

According to military officials on Telegram, 12 houses were damaged, injuring a man and a 31-year-old woman.

Images show Ukrainian soldiers preparing artillery shells filled with flyers near Bakhmut, Donetsk region.

The flyers have messages urging Russian troops to give up and are then fired towards enemy positions using a Grad multiple-launch rocket system.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Sunday that their air defences shot down another drone over the western Belgorod region at around 10 pm Moscow time.

The ministry said in a post on its Telegram channel: “There were no casualties or destruction.”

An entire family including a newborn baby girl and her 12-year-old brother were among seven people killed during intense Russian shelling in a village in southern Kherson on Sunday.

Russian shells hit the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnieper River, and killed a family that included a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and 23-day-old baby girl, Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry said.

Another resident was also killed, as well as two men in the neighbouring village of Stanislav.

Ukraine’s interior minister Igor Klymenko said the shells hit the family’s home in Shiroka Balka, adding: “Terrorists must be stopped. They must be stopped by force. They don’t understand anything else.”

Read the full report by Matt Drake below.

“Torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of your enemy is one of the crimes which is so hard for societies and individuals to recover from. That is the antithesis of a peaceful settlement,” said Dr Alice Jill Edwards, in an exclusive interview with The Independent.

“It’s not the investigations into these allegations, it’s the actual acts themselves. There really is never any peace without justice, and I think the Ukraine context is very interesting how this [bid] to investigate crimes of torture is being carried out in real-time while a war is underway. That is rare.”

The UK’s Ministry of Defence first reported that Wagner mercenaries had been deployed in Ukraine on 28 March 2022, little over a month into Moscow’s invasion – after Russian losses had already begun to hamper the pace of the initial assault.

Military consultant Nicholas Drummond told The Independent: “Wagner was involved from the start but the group started to become a key player when the initial assault ran into difficulty. By the end of March, it was very evident that the invasion had gone wrong. Putin used Prigozhin as a troubleshooter and Wagner was there to fill the gaps.”

But despite handing Mr Putin the rare opportunity to vaunt a military success in Ukraine with the grinding and costly capture of Bakhmut, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin would ultimately turn on the Kremlin, and his exact whereabouts now are up for debate, as his mercenaries’ presence in Belarus raises concerns across the border with Nato.

My colleague Maryam Zakir-Hussain takes a look below at Wagner’s movements since the war’s outset: