Lviv death toll rises to four
The death toll in Thursday’s missile strikes on Lviv has risen to four, the mayor said, as rescuers continue to search through the debris of an apartment building for survivors and casualties, the authorities said.
Nine people were wounded and rescuers continued work at the site, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The missile strike destroyed the top two floors of two sections of a building, it said.
Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi posted a 13-second video showing a wide, curving, four-storey apartment building with parts of the upper floors missing or in rubble.
Key events
Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of Lviv, has given an operational update after the attack on the western Ukrainian city which has claimed at least four lives. He wrote on the Telegram messaging app:
The enemy attacked our region from the Black Sea with Kalibr missiles. The “west” air command of the air forces of the armed forces of Ukraine destroyed seven missiles over Lviv region.
The death of four people was confirmed. They were all in the house at the time of the shooting. Condolences to relatives. 34 people were injured. About 30 houses and more than 50 cars were damaged.
Kozytskyi went on to say that falling debris had also caused damages in two separate villages in the region, but without causing any injuries.
He finished his message with an appeal for the west to supply F16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
The claims have not been independently verified.
From Reuters: Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions that have killed Ukrainian civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Thursday as the US weighs whether to answer the Ukraine government’s call to supply it with the weapons.
Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group, called on both Russia and Ukraine to stop using the weapons, and urged the US not to supply them.
More than 120 countries have signed on to an international treaty banning the weapons, which typically scatter a large number of smaller so-called bomblets over a large area that can kill or maim unwary civilians months or years later.
Russia, Ukraine and the US have all to declined to sign the treaty.
A senior Pentagon official said late last month that cluster munitions would be useful for Ukraine in pushing back against Russian forces, but they had not been approved for Kyiv yet because of congressional restrictions and concerns from allies.
Martin Pengelly
On his recent visit to the US, Boris Johnson “reminded” Donald Trump he “actually played an important role” in supporting and arming Ukraine against its Russian invaders, the former British prime minister said, adding that British aid to Kyiv was “enabled” by Trump’s example.
Johnson made the claim about the notoriously pro-Russian former president – and brushed off mention of Trump’s impeachment for blocking military aid to Ukraine – in an interview on One Decision, a podcast hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former chief of the British intelligence service MI6, and the journalist Julia Macfarlane.
Emma Graham-Harrison
Victoria Amelina, an award-winning novelist, essayist and poet, died on 1 July from injuries sustained in a Russian missile attack on a restaurant in eastern Ukraine. Generous, talented and funny, Victoria also had an extraordinary moral clarity and commitment, underpinned by vast reserves of unshowy courage.
After the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, she trained as a war crimes researcher, which meant travelling to frontlines and bearing witness to extreme violence and suffering.
A Ukrainian homeland, where all citizens were free, was so important to her that she did not hesitate to give up her own home to fight for it, taking her son to safety outside Ukraine then returning to follow the trail of Russian destruction.
In her travels and work she tried to counter horror with hope, documenting atrocities but also organising aid and cultural activities, which she insisted were as important to Ukraine’s fight as physical sustenance.
This is an essay she wrote reflecting on her early life in Lviv and the evolution of her Ukrainian identity:
This video has not been verified, but it appears to show the damage done to the apartment blocks by this morning’s Russian missile attack:
“Consequences of the night attack by Russian terrorists,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote alongside a Telegram video post showing a damaged building.
“There will definitely be a response to the enemy. A tangible one.”
Lviv death toll rises to four
The death toll in Thursday’s missile strikes on Lviv has risen to four, the mayor said, as rescuers continue to search through the debris of an apartment building for survivors and casualties, the authorities said.
Nine people were wounded and rescuers continued work at the site, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The missile strike destroyed the top two floors of two sections of a building, it said.
Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi posted a 13-second video showing a wide, curving, four-storey apartment building with parts of the upper floors missing or in rubble.
In the interview with CNN, Zelenskiy also said he had told US and European leaders ahead of the counteroffensive that a lack of supplies would result in more casualties.
“I’m grateful to the US as the leaders of our support, but I told them as well as European leaders that we would like to start our counteroffensive earlier, and we will need all the weapons and material for that.”
“Why? Simply because if we start later, it will go slower, and we will have losses of lives, because everything is heavily mined – we will have to go through it all.”
Zelenskiy says slow weapons delivery delayed counteroffensive
Slow weapons deliveries to Ukraine delayed Kyiv’s planned counteroffensive, allowing Russia to bolster its defenses in occupied areas including with mines, Zelenskiy said in a TV interview broadcast Wednesday.
Speaking via a translator in the pre-taped interview in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa days earlier, Zelenskiy said that he had hoped to begin the counteroffensive against Russia “much earlier” than its actual start early June.
“Our slowed-down counteroffensive is happening due to certain difficulties in the battlefield. Everything is heavily mined there,” Zelensky said.
“I wanted our counteroffensive happening much earlier, because everyone understood that if the counteroffensive will be unfolding later, then much bigger part of our territory will be mined.”
A separate video posted by Lviv governor Maksym Kozytski showed a multi-storey building with part of its top floor destroyed.
“As of now, the rubble is being dismantled. Of course, there will be injured and dead.”
“We are doing everything possible to… save people.”
Eight people were wounded in the strike and “about 60 apartments” were damaged, Sadovyi said.
“Windows got blown out, many cars got damaged, around 50 cars… there may be more people under the rubble,” he said on Telegram.
Earlier, he warned that “several” missiles were “moving in the direction of the western regions,” citing Ukraine’s Air Forces Command.
Three killed in missile strike on Lviv apartment block
Three people were killed after a missile hit an apartment block in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, its mayor said on Thursday.
A Russian missile made a “direct hit to a residential building” in the city of Lviv, governor Maksym Kozytski said in a video posted to Telegram.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi wrote in a post that the strike had left “three dead already.”
The missile caused a fire which was extinguished, Kozytski said, adding that emergency services were on the scene and rescuers were “sorting through the debris.”
Sadovyi earlier said on Telegram that a “series of explosions” had been heard and warned residents to stay in shelters.
One person was in “serious” condition and had been taken to hospital, he added.
On 20 June Lviv was hit by a major Russian drone assault on Kyiv and other cities.
Opening summary
Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Sullivan.
Our top story this morning: three people were killed in a Russian missile attack that hit an apartment building in Lviv overnight, the mayor of the western Ukrainian city said on Thursday.
And Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that slow weapons deliveries to delayed Kyiv’s planned counteroffensive, allowing Russia to bolster its defenses in occupied areas including with mines.
Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa days earlier, Zelensky said that he had sought to begin the counteroffensive against Russia “much earlier” than its actual start early June.
We’ll have more on these stories shortly. Elsewhere meanwhile:
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UN observers appealed on Wednesday for greater access to Europe’s largest nuclear plant, after Moscow and Kyiv traded accusations over a possible “catastrophic” act of sabotage at the Russian-controlled facility in Ukraine. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Wednesday said they have yet to observe any indications of mines or explosives but called for additional access to the plant.
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A man who detonated explosives in a court house in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday has died, Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko said. Police officers were wounded in the explosion.
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US president Joe Biden told Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson on Wednesday that he is “looking forward” to the country’s stalled Nato membership bid winning final approval, as the western alliance prepares for next week’s summit. Speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said he wanted to reiterate that he “fully, fully supports Sweden’s membership in Nato”. Biden added he was “anxiously looking forward” to the bid being ratified.
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James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, and Ben Wallace, the British defence secretary, joined with their Polish counterparts Zbigniew Rau and Mariusz Blaszczak at a pre-Nato summit meeting in London on Wednesday. The two countries emphasised their mutual agreement on defence and foreign policy ahead of next week’s Nato meeting.
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The UN is making “every effort” to ensure that the Black Sea grain deal and a memorandum of understanding to facilitate access of Russian fertiliser and other products to global markets are extended, UN trade chief Rebeca Grynspan said. “We need both to continue bringing down prices and have stable markets of food and fertilisers in the world,” Grynspan told reporters in Geneva.
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Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that Russian forces had struck three Ukrainian army groups near Bakhmut, amid conflicting reports about fighting in the area. The Reuters news agency could not independently verify the battlefield situation. The ministry made no comment in its daily briefing on reports that Russian forces have retreated from the village of Klishchiivka, south-west of Bakhmut, which a Russian-installed official in eastern Ukraine has denied.
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Vladimir Rogov, one of the prominent pro-Russian figures in occupied Zaporizhzhia region, has reported on his Telegram account that “the houses of local residents, a garage and a car were damaged” in the region due to Ukrainian fire. He said there were no casualties. The claims have not been independently verified.
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Russian president Vladimir Putin’s former election spokesperson has been appointed to run the state news agency Tass, according to a government order published on Wednesday. The Kremlin has tightened its control over the media since the start of the Ukraine war, forcing the closure of leading independent news outlets and designating many journalists and publications as “foreign agents”.
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Next week’s Nato summit must offer “real security guarantees” to Ukraine, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said on Wednesday. Speaking in Warsaw alongside the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, Meloni said Italy and Poland were “in perfect agreement” on the issue, Reuters reported.
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Russia accused a small US based charity of “sabotaging” the construction of a huge gas pipeline to China and banned it as an “undesirable organisation”. Jennifer Castner, director of the Altai Project, described the accusation as absurd. The move has followed clamp-downs on many foreign NGOs in Russia, including a similar ban last month on the local arm of the WWF environmental group.
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Russia said on Wednesday that one person was killed and another 41 injured, including two children, by Ukrainian fire in the east Ukraine town of Makiivka, which is occupied by Russian forces.
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Residential buildings and a medical facility were damaged by a Russian rocket attack on Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region overnight.
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Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions came under fire from Ukrainian forces across the border in the early hours of Wednesday, the regions’ governors said, adding that no casualties were reported.
