Putin official killed in car bomb as Ukraine gains ground near Bakhmut – live

UN and local investigators searched for answers on Saturday at the site of a Russian missile strike on the small Ukrainian village of in Hroza, in the northeastern Kharkiv region

The attack days earlier turned its sole cafe to rubble and killed nearly 52 people gathered for a dead soldier’s wake, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials in Kyiv.

A precision missile strike on a cafe hosting soldier’s wake killed 52 and decimated the Ukrainian village of Hroza.

The village cafe was obliterated and whole families perished after the missile strike on Thursday cut short a wake for Andriy Kozyr, a soldier from Hroza who died last winter fighting Russia’s invading forces in eastern Ukraine.

His son Dmytro Kozyr, also a soldier, was among those who died in the attack alongside his wife Nina, just days short of her 20th birthday, according to Ukrainian media reports. As of Saturday, Ukrainian law enforcement and the regional prosecutor’s office put the number of victims at 52.

The tiny village only had a population on around 500 before the war, and many are questioning why it was targetted.

Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu inspected a military factory producing the Sarmat intercontinental missile, saying it would soon be ready for use, his ministry posted on Telegram Saturday.

The Sarmat missile will be “put on combat duty in the near future,” the ministry said in a statement, as reported by AFP.

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Russia had almost completed work on the Sarmat, after Moscow earlier this year announced it had successfully tested the missiles. Putin said the “truly unique weapon will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats.”

Russia attacked the city of Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, southern Ukraine, three times in one day, local Governor Serhii Lysak reported on Saturday

Russian forces used heavy artillery against the city twice during the day and once in the evening, Lysak said in a Telegram post.

A school, municipal enterprise, 11 homes, power lines, a gas pipeline, and nearly a dozen commercial buildings were damaged, the governor said.

However, no casualties were reported, according to the local authorities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Ukrainian PM said: “We in Ukraine have a special feeling about what has happened. Thousands of rockets in the Israeli sky… People killed just on the streets… Civilian cars shot through… Detainees being humiliated…

“Our position is crystal clear: anyone who causes terror and death anywhere on the planet must be held accountable.”

Mr Ulyanov, Moscow’s envoy to the CTBTO, said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that “#Russia plans to revoke ratification (which took place in the year 2000) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.”

“We are disturbed by the comments of Ambassador Ulyanov in Vienna today,” a US State Department spokesperson said in a statement. “A move like this by any State Party needlessly endangers the global norm against nuclear explosive testing.”

Following Russia’s Iskander missile attack, which killed 52 during funeral near Kharkiv, The Independent explains what the missiles are:

UN and local investigators searched for answers at the site of a Russian missile strike on a small Ukrainian village that days earlier turned its sole cafe to rubble and killed nearly 52 people gathered for a dead soldier’s wake, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials in Kyiv.

“My initial conversations with local residents and survivors indicate that virtually all those killed were civilians and that the target itself, a busy village cafe and store, was also clearly civilian,” Danielle Bell, who led the team that visited Hroza on Saturday, was cited as saying in the UN statement. “What happened here is yet another tragic reminder of the deadly impact Russia’s invasion has had on Ukraine‘s civilians,” Bell added. The village cafe was obliterated and whole families perished after the missile strike on Thursday cut short a wake for Andriy Kozyr, a soldier from Hroza who died last winter fighting Russia’s invading forces in eastern Ukraine.

His son Dmytro Kozyr, also a soldier, was among those who died in the attack alongside his wife Nina, who was just days short of her 21st birthday.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry voiced its support for Israel’s “right to defend itself and its people” in a post on social media.

The ministry said it “strongly condemns the ongoing terrorist attacks against Israel, including rocket attacks against the civilian population in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv”.

Earlier today Hamas took some 50 people hostage in a Israeli settlement near the border with Gaza, a broadcaster in Israel reports, as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his country to be at war.

Russia’s defence ministry said the country’s air defence systems had “detected and destroyed” a Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missile deployed in an attempted attack on the Crimean Peninsula on Saturday.

The report has not been verified as of yet and the Russian defence ministry did not say where exactly the missile was shot down. But Ukraine in recent weeks has stepped up attacks on Crimea, which was occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014.

“On Oct. 7, at about 6 p.m. Moscow time, the Kyiv regime attempted a terrorist attack on the territory of Crimea with an anti-aircraft missile of the S-200 air defence system that had been converted to an attack version,” the defence ministry said in a Telegram post.

“Russian air defence systems promptly detected and destroyed the Ukrainian missile in the air,” it added.