Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged his allies to bring about “regime change” in Russia, hours after a Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv killed 26 people including three children. The Ukrainian president said he believed Russia could be “pushed” to stop the war. “But if the world doesn’t aim to change the regime in Russia, that means even after the war ends, Moscow will still try to destabilise neighbouring countries,” he said on Thursday, speaking virtually to a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the cold war-era Helsinki accords. Russia’s overnight strikes wounded at least 150 people, authorities said. The death toll previously stood at 16, including two children, but was revised on Friday after rescuers retrieved 10 bodies from the rubble of a residential building in the Sviatoshynsky district, including the body of a two-year-old child, according to the interior ministry.
Russia fired more than 300 drones and eight cruise missiles at Ukraine – with Kyiv the main target – from late Wednesday to early Thursday, the Ukrainian air force said. One missile tore through a nine-storey residential building in the capital’s west, ripping off its facade, authorities said. Zelenskyy said the injured including 16 children and six police officers. It was the largest number of children hurt in a single attack on Kyiv during the war, the rescue service said.
Donald Trump criticised Russia’s actions in Ukraine, suggesting new sanctions against Moscow were coming. “Russia – I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing,” the US president said on Thursday. “We’re going to put sanctions,” he said, before adding: “I don’t know that sanctions bother him,” referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russia’s attack came just days after Trump issued a 10-to-12-day ultimatum for Moscow to halt its invasion or face sanctions.
The Ukrainian parliament has passed a law restoring independence to two anti-corruption bodies, essentially annulling another law adopted last week that prompted the biggest street protests since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, reports Shaun Walker. Several hundred protesters outside the parliament building in Kyiv erupted into chants of “the people are the power” as the bill passed on Thursday. Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hope the new law will put an end to what had threatened to become a political crisis domestically and had worried European allies. He signed the law into force swiftly after the vote.
Russia claimed on Thursday that it had captured the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important military hub in the eastern Donetsk region. Zelenskyy called Moscow’s claim “Russian disinformation”, saying: “Ukrainian units are defending our positions.” Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko said Russian forces “have full control over the entire northern and eastern part” of Chasiv Yar, including districts that had been hardest to get. But he said fighting for the western side was ongoing, with the situation “very difficult”. The battlefields reports could not be independently verified.
