At least 37 deaths across country since Thursday as residential areas appear to be targeted

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine on Friday evening, as the country braced itself for another string of intensified long-range missile strikes on cities and towns across the country.

At least 37 people have been killed in missile attacks since Thursday that appear to have targeted busy civilian areas and crowded buildings, a tactic Russia has repeatedly denied employing.

Head of national security council says ‘more and more civilian targets’ being hit, after deadly Vinnytsia attack

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

A top Ukrainian official has accused Russia of deliberately escalating its deadly attacks on civilian targets, after recent missile strikes including this week’s targeting of the crowded city centre of Vinnytsia, which killed 23 people, including three children.

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, told the Guardian that monitoring of Russian strikes suggested an increased emphasis in recent weeks on terrorising Ukraine’s civilian population.

Moscow claims missile attack on civilian area was directed at building where Ukraine air force officials were meeting suppliers

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates

Russia has confirmed it carried out a missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, the latest in a string of deadly attacks on civilian areas, as worries in Ukraine grow that Russia is preparing a new assault in the east.

The Russian defence ministry claimed in a military briefing on Friday that Thursday’s cruise missile attack was directed at a building where top officials from Ukraine’s air forces were meeting foreign arms suppliers.

Ukraine says up to 70% of Russian missile attacks are deliberately inflicted on “peaceful” Ukrainian cities

Russian and pro-Russian Luhansk People’s Republic separatist forces claim to have entered the outskirts of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donbas, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

Acknowledging that reports have not corroborated, the ministry said Russian forces have been slowly advancing westwards and probing assaults towards Siversk from Lysychansk to open a pathway onward to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Bakhmut is likely to be the next objective, once Siversk is secured,” the report read.

The simple truth is that, as we speak, children, women and men, the young and the old, are living in terror.”

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Images of Ukrainian territorial defence troops having dinner outside the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, have dropped over the wires this morning.

Hot meals were served to servicemen after a combat tactic training exercise.

It is going to be a tough 2022—and possibly an even tougher 2023, with increased risk of recession.

The human tragedy of the war in Ukraine has worsened. So, too, has its economic impact especially through commodity price shocks that are slowing growth and exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis that affects hundreds of millions of people—and especially poor people who cannot afford to feed their families. And it’s only getting worse.

Turkey to monitor grain exports and establish coordination centre; Zelenskiy says ‘several hundred thousand children’ taken to Russia against their will

• Bakhmut bombarded after Ukraine attack on Russia air defences
• At a glance: what we know on day 140 of the invasion

Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency is reporting that the Russian delegation has arrived in Turkey for talks over the export of grain from Ukraine. They cite a diplomatic source.

The source told them there was “high confidence” of progress in today’s talks, at which military delegations from Turkey, Russia and Ukraine will meet with a UN delegation at a secret location.

Heavy shelling thought to be reprisal for Ukraine attack or preamble to renewed offensive on Donetsk cities

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Russian artillery and rockets pounded the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut overnight and into Wednesday morning in what some sources speculated was a reprisal for a Ukrainian attack using a US-supplied Himars missile system on a Russian air defence site in Luhansk.

Others suggested the shelling could signal a renewed Russian offensive aimed at cities in Donetsk province.

Residents say they have nowhere to go nor the means to leave as frontline encroaches on civilians

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In the small town of Chasiv Yar, not far from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines, rescue workers were still searching through the wreckage left by Saturday’s multiple rocket strike. At least 43 people died, one of the biggest losses of life in Ukrainian-controlled Donbas since a single Russian rocket killed at least 52 people at the train station in the nearby town of Kramatorsk in April.

The rescuers had managed to pull nine people out of the rubble but by Tuesday, they told the Guardian, they expected to recover only corpses.

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Russia’s Tass news agency is reporting that “dozens of people were injured as a result of the strike of the armed forces of Ukraine at Novaya Kakhovka”.

Novaya Kakhovka is on the Dnieper river in an area of Kherson occupied by pro-Russian forces in the south of Ukraine.

Unfortunately, there are casualties, a large number of injured, dozens of people were left homeless. The victims were admitted to both the city hospital and the military hospital. We still have to assess the damage, because the situation is still ongoing.

Several people reportedly killed in strike – possibly from Himars system – on ammunition store in Nova Kakhovka

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates

At least seven people were reportedly killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on a large ammunition store in the town of Nova Kakhovka, in Russia-occupied Kherson, in a strike attributed to recently acquired US weapons.

The claims of fatalities were made by the Russian-installed administration in the town and could not be immediately verified, though footage on social media showed a large explosion lighting up the night, burning ammunition and towering smoke.

Analysis: Kyiv says it is raising a million-strong army but it will need to carefully plan its counterattack

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news

Ukraine hopes to assemble a “million strong” army to try to retake territory occupied by Russia, the defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said over the weekend. Its forces, he added, had also demonstrated to the US they could make good use of newly acquired longer-range rocket artillery, opening the door to the supply of more.

But however impressive sounding the claims were, it is hard to believe Ukraine is yet capable of an effective counteroffensive, even if the much-vaunted US Himars and the British M270 rocket artillery, with their range of 70km to 80km, have begun to arrive and are being put to good use. A turning of the military tide, if it happens at all, will most likely take time.

At least 18 people dead after Russian missile attack on eastern Ukrainian town; residents in two southern regions urged to evacuate as Ukraine prepares to launch counteroffensive

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