Ukraine updates: NATO chief backs Kursk offensive

A Russian guided bomb attack in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region killed two and injured 10, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Syniehubov said that a residential building was damaged in the Russian bomb attack on the Kharkiv village of Cherkaska Lozova.

"Two women died," he said. "One was pulled from the rubble, the other died in an ambulance."

It comes a day after a Russian attack on the regional capital, also known as Kharkiv, killed seven people, according to local authorities.

Over 66,000 Russian military personnel have died in Ukraine during the war, which is now well into its third year, an independent Russian media outlet has reported.

Mediazona's toll was based on its own list of known soldier deaths, put together in conjunction with the BBC Russian services and relying on open-source data.

The outlet said the list has gone up by over 4,600 in the past four weeks, adding that the figure could be higher since many soldiers' deaths are not made public.

Anastasia Alekseyeva, a journalist at Mediazona, said that the latest death numbers were "not linked to Ukraine's offensive in the Kursk region or Russia's advance in the east". She added that researchers were still working through a backlog of death reports.

According to the report, the toll includes some 172 conscripts doing national service. The highest figures were pulled from the early months of the war.

The region with the largest absolute number of deaths -- 2,578 -- is the southern republic of Bashkortostan, which has a large Muslim population. 

Most of those who died, precisely 6,877 of them, were aged between 33-35. Meanwhile, a whopping 12,000 of the deaths were prisoners, amid a Russian initiative to recruit inmates to fight in the war, promising them freedom after they serve for a while.

Alekseyeva nevertheless noted a recent drop in the numbers, commenting that the "recruitment drive is not as active."

Russia launched 52 drones into Ukraine overnight, 24 of which were shot down, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. 

In Kyiv, air raid alerts were in place for about four hours, but all drones targeting the capital were shot down with no damage reported, authorities said.

Ukrainian officials also reported that drones were intercepted over the Poltava, Cherkasy, Kyrovohrad and Dnipropetrovsk regions in central Ukraine, Chernihiv and Sumy in the north, and Mykolayiv in the south.

Regional administrators in Cherkasy region said falling debris had damaged several private residences. Besides that, there were no reports of any injuries or major damage.

The number of people injured in a massive Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has been revised substantially upwards.

According to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov, 97 people were now reported to have been injured as a result of the attack and the figure includes 22 minors.

The death toll has increased from six to seven which also includes a 14-year-old girl.

On Friday, a 12-story block of flats and a playground in the northeastern city of Kharkiv were hit by Russian glide bombs.

Glide bombs are hard to intercept and they have become a fearsome tool in the war in eastern Ukraine in recent months that can cause huge devastation.

Kyiv says that the most effective way to counter such strikes is to target Russian planes, not the bombs themselves.

Five people were killed and another 46 injured in a Ukrainian attack on the western Russian city of Belgorod on Friday night, local officials have said.

Of the injured, 37 have been taken to hospital, including seven children, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

Two residential buildings, several shops and cars were reportedly damaged in the shelling.

The city of Belgorod is the capital of the Belgorod region, which borders not only Ukraine but also lies just south of Russia's Kursk region, the location where Ukrainian troops launched a surprise attack four weeks ago.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has described Ukraine's ongoing incursion into Russia's Kursk region as a legitimate form of self-defense.

"Ukraine has a right to defend itself," he told Germany's Die Welt newspaper on Saturday. "And according to international law, this right does not stop at the border."

The offensive, which caught the Kremlin off guard when it was launched from Ukraine's Sumy region on August 6, is now in its fourth week.

Ukrainian troops claim to have captured dozens of small towns and villages across over 1,200 square kilometers (around 500 square miles) of territory and  claimed to have taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war.

"The Russian soldiers, tanks and bases [in Kursk] are legitimate targets under international law," said Stoltenberg, adding that Kyiv had not informed NATO about its plan beforehand and did not play a role in them.

Stoltenberg, who is stepping down as NATO chief in October, also welcomed Germany's commitment to continue its support for Ukraine – despite Berlin's plans to reduce its own direct contribution to Kyiv in next year's budget.

He praised "Germany's clear commitment to remaining Ukraine's primary military donor in Europe and the second-biggest worldwide [after the United States]."

The German government has justified plans to cut direct aid to Ukraine from €7.48 billion to around €4 billion in 2025 by highlighting a European Union plan to divert interest accumulated from frozen Russian assets held within the bloc to Kyiv.

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