Russian drone crashed into nine-storey residential building in Odesa on Saturday. This live blog is now closed
It is 2.30pm in Ukraine. Here is a summary of events
The bodies of a mother and baby found in the rubble of a missile-hit apartment block in Odesa on Sunday have brought the death toll from Saturday’s strike to 10. Two babies and a toddler are amongst those found dead following a Russian drone strike on a nine-storey apartment block in Odesa on Saturday, according to briefings from officials.
Five people were injured overnight by Russian shelling in Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. A “massive missile attack” on a residential area of Myrnohrad injured two women aged 50 and 33 and a 37-year-old man, Donetsk Oblast’s regional prosecutor’s office posted on Telegram. It said a Russian missile strike in a residential area of Pokrovsk at 6.30 on Sunday morning also left two women with shrapnel wounds.
People are still queueing up to place flowers on Alexei Navalny’s grave in Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery. The pile of floral tributes is growing despite state intimidation as Russians pay tribute to the late opposition leader.
Turkey believes it is time for ceasefire talks to start in Ukraine, its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said at a press conference on Sunday. Fidan said: “A dialogue for a ceasefire (in Ukraine) should start. That doesn’t mean recognising the occupation (by Russia), but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately.”
The wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Russia’s most high profile political prisoners, says it has taken two years to secure a meeting with the UK government, despite him being a British citizen. Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian jail and his wife Evgenia told The Observer she met David Cameron on Friday.
Ukraine’s border with Poland remains blocked at all six checkpoints to trucks because of protests by Polish farmers about the import of grain from Ukraine, according to local reports. State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on national television that around 2,400 trucks had been waiting to pass the border as of Sunday, according to a report in The Kyiv Independent.
Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on the west to rapidly deliver more air-defence systems as a wave of Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes killed at least 11 people. “Russia continues to hit civilians,” the Ukrainian president posted on social media on Saturday. Eight were confirmed dead, including a child and a baby, after an overnight drone strike on an apartment block in the southern port city of Odesa, a regional official said. Zelenskiy said in his post: “We need more air defences from our partners. We need to strengthen the Ukrainian air shield to add more protection for our people from Russian terror.”
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a purported recording of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin. A German defence ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was “intercepted”, a ministry spokesperson said. The recording apparently showed German officials discussing striking Crimea and delivery of long-range missiles to Kyiv.
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