Ukraine updates: Russian missile strike kills 2 in Odesa

Dozens of civilians have been injured in a Russian airstrike on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a high-rise residential building was hit and that a fire broke out between the 9th and 12th floors.

On the Telegram messaging service, Zelenskyy said that 35 people had been injured, including three children.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov later said 41 people had been injued, four of them children.

Ukraine's second-most populous city has increasingly been the target of strikes as Russian forces attempt to push forward in the northeast. In early May, Russia took control of several villages in the north of the Kharkiv region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine's troops were suffering high losses because Western military aid was coming too slowly.

He made the comments in an interview for the CNN broadcaster.

Zelenskyy said the situation in eastern Ukraine was "very tough," adding that half of Ukraine's brigades there were not equipped.

"So you lose a lot of people. You lose people because they are not in armed vehicles ... they don't have artillery, they don't have artillery rounds," Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy said that military aid from Western allies was arriving too slowly.

"We need 14 brigades to be ready," Zelenskyy stressed, adding that Ukraine had only succeeded at equipping four brigades with recent aid packages.

He called for Western allies to strengthen Ukraine so that Russian President Vladimir Putin will agree to peace negotiations.

"Make Ukraine strong, and you will see [Putin] will sit and negotiate," Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine's president reiterated his demands for allies to allow Kyiv to use long-range missiles to strike Russian territory in order to damage Russian air force infrastructure far away from the Ukrainian border.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has sharply criticized US sanctions imposed on Russia's state-owned RT television network, with spokeswoman Maria Zakharova threatening countermeasures.

On Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused RT of seeking to "meddle in the sovereign affairs of countries around the world." New information showed that RT "possess cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information and influence operations and military procurement," he added.

The US targeted RT's parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as a related state media group, Rossiya Segodnya, and its director general, Dmitry Kiselyov. The sanctions block all property and interests in property of the designated persons that are in the United States, or in the possession or control of US persons.

In a statement on Sunday, Zakharova accused the US of censorship and an attack on the freedom of the press. 

The move against RT represents "another wave of restrictions against Russian media and journalists," she said, complaining that Washington was trying to shut down popular Russian media to prevent alternative views from spreading.

Russian shelling killed one person in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, local officials said, as Moscow's troops closed in on the key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.

"At around 11 a.m. (0800 GMT), the enemy shelled the western part of the city... Unfortunately, one person died," Pokrovsk's military administration said on Telegram.

Russian troops also fired artillery shells at a building near a gas station in the city earlier in the day, it said.

More than 20,000 people have fled Pokrovsk since August, while Russian strikes over the past two weeks have cut off water and electricity to many of the remaining residents.

Russia has been advancing on the city for months, coming within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of its eastern outskirts, according to the local administration.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of "bluster" over his warning that NATO would be "at war" with Moscow if it allowed Ukraine to use long-range weapons to strike inside Russia.

"I think that what Putin's doing is throwing dust up into the air," Lammy told the BBC.

"There's a lot of bluster. That's his modus operandi. He threatens about tanks, he threatens about missiles, he threatens about nuclear weapons," he added.

Tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict reached dire levels this week as US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House to discuss whether to ease rules on Kyiv's use of Western-supplied weaponry, but delayed a decision on the move.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asking for months for permission to use British Storm Shadow missiles and US-made ATACMS rockets to hit targets deeper inside Russia.

Lammy said talks between Starmer, Biden and Zelenskyy over the use of the missiles would continue at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York later this month. 

Two people were killed in a missile attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa, local officials said.

Ukraine's air force said Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia fired overnight, while the rest hit the outskirts of Odesa. 

Oleh Kiper, Odesa's regional governor, said the two who died Saturday night were a couple and that another person was wounded in the attack. 

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down 29 Ukrainian drones over western and southwestern regions overnight into Sunday, with no damage caused by falling debris. 

It also said another Ukrainian drone was shot down Sunday morning over the western Ryazan region.

dh/rc (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)