Ukraine-Russia war – live: Zelensky aide slams Elon Musk’s ‘ignorance and ego’ for thwarting Ukrainian drone strike

A Russian missile attack on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine has killed one policeman and injured at least 44 others, emergency officials said.

The incident was one of several Russian attacks across the country overnight, officials said, and ten buildings were damaged in the attack on Kryvyi Rih.

Three of the people who were pulled out of the rubble were in serious condition, according to Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine‘s minister of internal affairs. Photos posted by Mr Klymenko on Telegram showed a building on fire and emergency services evacuating the injured.

Three people were also killed on Friday after a Russian bomb struck the village of Odradokamianka in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, Mr Klymenko said.

He added that three people were also injured in a Russian missile attack in the eastern city of Sumy.

Russian forces also struck the Odesa region in the west with drones for the fifth time in a week, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. No casualties were reported.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Vladimir Putin was behind the death of Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The mercenary leader died in an unexplained plane crash with his top lieutenants last month.

Ukrainian president Mr Zelensky made the claim on Friday but provided no evidence to back up his assertion made during a press conference in Kyiv.

“The fact that he killed Prigozhin – at least that’s the information we all have, not any other kind – that also speaks to his rationality, and about the fact that he is weak,” Mr Zelensky said.

The Kremlin says all possible causes of the crash will be investigated, including the possibility of foul play. It has called the suggestion that Russian president Mr Putin ordered the deaths of Mr Prigozhin and his men an “absolute lie”.

Mr Prigozhin this summer led a brief mutiny in Russia that posed the biggest challenge to Mr Putin’s rule since he rose to power in 1999. It prompted the Kremlin chief to accuse its authors of “treason” and a “stab in the back”.

Many critics of Mr Putin have died in unclear circumstances during his 23 years in power, or narrowly escaped dying.

The strikes are now daily and on Tuesday the Russian defence ministry said its air defence systems destroyed two drones over the Kaluga and Tver regions, which border the Moscow region, as well as one closer to the capital, over the Istra district.

Maryam Zakir-Hussain has mapped the attacks:

The depleted uranium anti-tank rounds soon to be in Ukraine’s military stockpiles have kicked up a debate over its use in the continuing Russian invasion.

It’s never been easy for the leaders of the world’s largest economies to find common ground, but the global ramifications of Russia’s war on Ukraine mean even greater challenges for meaningful agreement at the Group of 20 meeting this year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this year’s host, has pledged not to let Ukraine overshadow the needs of the mostly developing nations in the so-called “ Global South,” but many of those issues are closely affected by the war.

A Russian air strike killed three civilians and wounded four other people on Friday in a village in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app that the air strike was on the village of Odradokamianka.

Russian air defences have downed a hostile aerial drone over northern Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of the peninsula’s administration, said on Friday.

Five drones were shot down over three Russian regions overnight on Thursday, with one targeting the capital, officials said Thursday.

There were reports of no casualties.

Meanwhile, Russia launched a fourth day of air attacks on the Ukrainian port city of Izmail, located on the Danube river. Oleh Kiper, regional Governor of Odesa, said infrastructure was damaged in the attack, including grain silos, and one person was injured.

The attack came one day after a Russian missile struck a busy market in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka in Donetsk, killing 17 and wounding at least 32. The attack overshadowed a two-day visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, aimed at assessing Ukraine’s 3-month-old counteroffensive and signaling continued U.S. support for the fight.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Friday condemned “sham elections” being staged by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories, saying they were “worthless” and would have no legal standing.

The ministry called on Ukraine’s international partners to denounce the votes and not to recognise the results.

The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in four regions only partly controlled by Russia began on Friday and is set to conclude on Sunday.

Russian authorities are holding local elections this weekend in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.

The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions begins Friday and concludes Sunday. It has already been denounced by Kyiv and the West.

“It constitutes a flagrant violation of international law, which Russia continues to disregard,” the Council of Europe, the continent’s foremost human rights body, said this week.

Kyiv echoed that sentiment, with the parliament saying in a statement that the balloting in areas where Russia “conducts active hostilities” poses a threat to Ukrainian lives. Lawmakers urged other countries not to recognize the results of the vote.

For Russia, it is important to go on with the voting to maintain the illusion of normalcy, despite the fact that the Kremlin does not have full control over the annexed regions, political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said.

“The Russian authorities are trying hard to pretend that everything is going according to plan, everything is fine. And if everything is going according to plan, then the political process should go according to plan,” said Gallyamov, who worked as a speechwriter for Russian president Vladimir Putin when Putin served as prime minister.

A Russian missile slammed into a police building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing a policeman and injuring many more people, interior minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed.

The police administrative building was destroyed and rescue workers pulled several people out of the rubble after the attack on president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

He put the number of wounded at 25. In a later update, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said about 40 had been wounded.

“A policeman was killed as a result of a Russian attack,” Klymenko said in an Telegram post accompanied by photos showing a building that had been reduced to rubble and rescue workers carrying away a man on a stretcher.