Ukraine officials have declared three more people dead as rescuers clear the rubble left by a Russian strike on a five-storey apartment block in the Donetsk town of Chasiv Yar.
The death toll now sits at 18, while six people have been rescued and contact has been made with a further two people trapped in the building’s ruins, emergency services said.
A further three people were also said to have been killed and 31 wounded in Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv in what officials alleged was Russian multiple rocket launcher fire at civilian areas. Moscow claimed to have struck deployment points for Ukrainian troops and foreign fighters.
It came as Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov told The Times that Kyiv is seeking to arm a force of one million troops with western weapons to retake economically vital southern territories captured by Russia, on the orders of president Volodymyr Zelensky.
And the UK’s Ministry of Defence claimed that Vladimir Putin’s military is facing several damaging personnel issues, with soldiers unable to take scheduled breaks from intense combat conditions.
