Ukraine updates: Kyiv strikes Russia after Kharkiv attack

Increased Russian attacks have prompted Ukraine's energy operator Ukrenergo to implement rolling nationwide blackouts through Monday.

Ukrenergo said restrictions were necessary due to "the increase in consumption at the beginning of the working week and the difficult situation in the power system after massive Russian attacks." The outages were scheduled between midnight Sunday and midnight Monday.

The country's energy suppliers have been repeatedly forced to initiate blackouts since Russia stepped up attacks on Ukraine in May.

Ukraine has tried to limit such outages by importing energy from neighboring countries.

Vera Jourova, vice president of the European Commission, warned on Sunday of Russian attempts to influence next year's parliamentary elections in Germany. 

In an interview with the the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jourova singled out Voice of Europe — a Kremlin-controlled media outlet — as "the blueprint for further operations."

said, "We are living in a new era of hostile influence," she said. "This bogus medium is probably just the tip of the iceberg."

Voice of Europe and two other Russian media outlets were banned in the EU in May.

Jourova pointed to Germany, France and Poland as most susceptible to Russian disinformation, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to affect a change in opinions in the three countries.

The Prague-based Voice of Europe, for instance, was suspected of pushing pro-Russian propaganda throughout the EU as well as bribing EU politicians. 

Right-wing parties such as Alternative for Germany (AfD) have been accused of accepting Russian money to push Moscow's agenda in national parliaments. Petr Bystron, an AfD parliamentarian in Berlin denied claims that he acted in Russia's favor in exchange for payment.  

German opposition politician Alexander Dobrindt on Sunday suggested that only Ukrainians who have found jobs in Germany should be allowed to stay in the country.

His statement was immediately criticized by members of the ruling SPD and Green coalition parties.

Dobrindt, who hails from Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), told the German tabloid Bild am Sonntag that Berlin should tell Ukrainians here — "Work in Germany or return to a safe area in western Ukraine." He also called for changes to the status afforded Ukrainians who flee to Germany. 

After Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Berlin announced that fleeing Ukrainians would not have to apply for asylum, instead they would automatically receive residency status and welfare payments.

Dobrindt's idea of repatriation was rebutted by several politicians, including Saskia Esken, chair of the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), who said the main reason so few Ukrainians were working was not that they preferred welfare payments but that German politicians had not done enough to ensure that their children could attend day care or kindergarten.

Omid Nouripour, head of the Green Party, said that to suggest Ukrainians were simply here for the money was to "ignore the horrors of Putin's war." 

Both SPD and Green politicians accused Dobrindt of drumming up prejudice against Ukrainians.

Last week, the government in Berlin declared its intention to continue payments to some 1.17 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany — the large majority of whom are women and children.  

According to Germany's Ministry of Labor, roughly 185,000 Ukrainians have regular jobs, another 47,000 are employed part-time or temporarily.

The Russian Defense Ministry raised the Sevastopol death toll to 6 on Sunday afternoon, adding that over 100 were injured in an attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean city.

Russian authorities say they shot down four US-made missiles over Sevastopol, but that one, carrying cluster munitions, exploded. "The detonation of the fragmentation warhead of the fifth US missile in the air resulted in numerous casualties among civilians in Sevastopol," the Defense Ministry said.

Two children were said to have been among the victims — one of them the nine-year-old daughter of a regional deputy mayor. 

Russia sought to blame the US for the attack, claiming Ukraine had used US-made ATACMS missiles: "All flight assignments in the US ATACMS operational-tactical missiles are entered by US specialists on the basis of the United States' own satellite intelligence data. The responsibility for a deliberate missile strike on peaceful residents of Sevastopol is borne primarily by Washington, which supplied this weaponry to Ukraine."

Russia's Defense Ministry ended its statement saying, "Such actions will not go unanswered." 

Monday, June 24, has been declared a day of mourning by Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev. 

Moscow-backed authorities in the Crimean Peninsula said a Ukrainian missile attack on the city of Sevastopol killed at least two people.

Russia illegally annexed Crimea along with Sevastopol, which is administered separately from the rest of the peninsula, in 2014. The naval base in the port city serves as the headquarters for Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

"According to provisional information, today's attack by Ukraine's armed forces on Sevastopol killed 2 peaceful residents, one of them a 2-year-old child," Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on the Telegram messaging service.

He said that the attack wounded 22 people.

Razvozhayev said that the missiles were intercepted but fragments fell on the shore causing casualties.

Russia's Defense Ministry said that four of the ATACMS missiles launched by Ukraine were shot down by air defense systems and the warhead of the fifth missile exploded in mid-air.

A Russian missile attack on the Kyiv region injured at least two people and damaged scores of buildings, the head of the region's state administration said.

Of the three missiles launched by Russia, Ukraine's air defense systems destroyed two over the Kyiv region, Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said. Oleshchuk did not say what happened to the third missile.

Falling debris injured two others, Ruslan Kravchenko, head of the Kyiv region's administration, wrote on Telegram.

Six multi-story housing units, more than 20 private houses, a gas station, a pharmacy, and an administrative building were also damaged, Kravchenko said.

Air raid alerts were throughout Kyiv for about an hour in the early hours on Sunday, starting at 4.50 am local time (0150 GMT).

Ukraine launched drone attacks on multiple Russian regions, including the western region of Bryansk, but there were no immediate reports of loss of life or property, Russian authorities said on Sunday.

The attack came hours after Russian guided bombs shattered an apartment building in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv on Saturday. The attack killed three people and injured at least 56 people, authorities said. 

Kharkiv lies about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the border with Russia and and has been the target of Russian attacks for months.

“This Russian terror through guided bombs must be stopped and can be stopped,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram following the attack.

At least 30 drones were shot down over Bryansk, a region that borders Ukraine and Belarus, Alexander Bogomaz, the governor there said.

Some drones were also shot down over the Smolensk region, Vasily Anokhin, governor of the region in Russia's west, said on Telegram. There were no reports of casualties or destruction in either region, the governors said.

Ukraine typically does not comment on attacks on Russian territory and did not comment on the drone strikes. 

mf/rm (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)