A spy suspect was being held yesterday following a cruise missile attack on the west Ukrainian city of Lviv.
He was arrested at the scene of one of two target areas hit having filmed missiles heading towards the city.
Police found he had even sent pictures of local checkpoints to two Russian mobile telephones before the attack, which injured five people.
As many as six cruise missiles were fired on Saturday afternoon at Lviv as US President Joe Biden visited neighbouring Poland.
It came amid growing fears the Kremlin is turning the sights of its long-range missiles towards the west of the country as its invasion is faltering and suffering huge losses.
The Russian onslaught was a reminder that Moscow is willing to strike anywhere in Ukraine despite claims it is re-focusing its offensive on the east.
The back-to-back weekend airstrikes, which hit a fuel depot and a military repairs complex, shook the haven for an estimated 200,000 people who have fled their hometowns.
The first strike involved two Russian rockets that hit an industrial area in the northeastern outskirts of Lviv.
A second rocket attack occurred just outside the city hours later and caused three explosions.
It is not known if one of more missiles either failed to reach Lviv or was shot down.
Yesterday the UK distanced itself from Biden’s apparent call for Russian regime change when he said in an impassioned speech in Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power”.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said the overthrow of Putin is “up to the Russian people” after the US President’s apparently unscripted call caused the White House to row back.
A White House official argued that the US president’s point was that the Russian leader “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region”.
Mr Zahawi said it is “for the Russian people to decide how they are governed” but suggested they “would certainly do well” to have someone who “is democratic and understands their wishes”.
He said: “That’s up to the Russian people and it is only the Russian people that can make that decision, I suspect most of them are pretty fed up with Putin and his cronies and the illegal war.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his plea for western allies to provide tanks and fighter jets to repel the Russians, as he hailed the courage of his troops defending the besieged city of Mariupol.
He said: “If only those who have been thinking for 31 days on how to hand over dozens of jets and tanks had 1% of their courage.”
Yesterday the latest horror toll of children caused by the Russian invasion was revealed as Ukraine said 139 children have died and more than 205 have been injured.
The Prosecutor General’s office said 733 educational institutions have been damaged, 74 of them completely destroyed.
But Russia has lost a staggering number of troops and military hardware in the invasion.
Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff says that 16,600 Russian soldiers have been killed. Among the warcraft destroyed are 582 tanks, 121 aircraft, and 127 helicopters.
But it is feared the losses have triggered a deadly reaction by Russia to take their failure out on the civilians, ruthlessly slaughtering them in constant barrages.
There are fears that the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, which has been holding out against Russian forces, could become the next Mariupol.
The city, close to the border with Belarus on the road to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, is surrounded, and trapped residents are suffering a lack of power and drinking water as well as shelling.
Just over a month into the invasion, Russia’s attack has slowed into a grinding war of attrition as its military tries to pound cities like Chernihiv into submission.
Bombings of hospitals and other non-military sites, such as the Mariupol theatre where Ukrainian officials said a Russian air strike is believed to have killed some 300 people last week, have sparked war crime allegations.
Russia, struggling to excuse its huge losses, has claimed the first stage of the operation - reducing Ukraine’s fighting capacity - had “generally been accomplished”.
Col-Gen Sergei Rudskoi, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said Russian forces could now focus on “the main goal, the liberation of Donbas”.
Donbas is the largely Russian-speaking eastern region where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Mariupol is located there, although outside of the two territories controlled by the separatists.
Russian troops appear to have stalled their ground offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv, and are concentrating on gaining ground in Donbas in the country’s south-east.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, appearing by video-link at Qatar’s Doha Forum, slammed the destruction of Mariupol.
He said: :”They are destroying our ports. The absence of exports from Ukraine will deal a blow to countries worldwide.”
In Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko says 90% of houses are damaged, 2,600 of them suffering direct hits from Grad howitzers or Buratino artillery strikes - of which 40% cannot be rebuilt.
It means almost half of the city needs to be entirely rebuilt from scratch.
Russian troops are now consolidating east, trying to move up from the south in areas like Mariupol and south from Kharkiv to encircle Donbas - where the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are disputed.
Experts have said Russian forces are trying to surround thousands of Ukrainian troops trying as President Vladimir Putin tries to capture the region in a desperate bid to make some capital from his disastrous invasion.
