Ukraine war briefing: Russian missile hits Kostiantynivka shopping centre, killing at least 14

A Russian missile hit a shopping centre in the eastern Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka in the frontline Donetsk region on Friday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 43 others, Ukrainian officials said. Heavy black smoke clouds rose from the destroyed building in images and videos posted by officials. The interior minister later said the blaze was put out. “Russian terrorists hit an ordinary supermarket and a post office,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “There are people under the rubble.” Emergency services continued working amid the rubble looking for survivors.

“No situation on the battlefield can justify targeting civilians,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said in an update on Kostiantynivka, which lies about 13km (eight miles) from the active combat line in Ukraine’s east. There was no immediate comment from Moscow. The Ukrainian regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, said Russia used a Kh-38 air-to-surface missile in the attack. Houses, shops and more than a dozen cars were also damaged. Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s largest private postal company, said its cargo office in the supermarket was damaged.

Ukrainian forces staged an overnight ambush on a Russian convoy 40km (25 miles) across the border in Russia’s Kursk province as the Kremlin declared a federal emergency over a four-day incursion that has badly damaged its credibility, Dan Sabbagh and Pjotr Sauer report. A video circulated by Russian military bloggers showed a destroyed convoy, with bodies visible inside some trucks, on the E38 east-west highway at Oktyabrskoe, a location far deeper inside Russia than any previously confirmed fighting since Ukraine’s forces crossed the border on Tuesday.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday it was sending rocket launchers, artillery, tanks and heavy trucks to reinforce its defences in the Kursk region, state media reported. About 1,000 Ukrainian troops and more than two dozen armoured vehicles and tanks were involved in the initial attack, Moscow said, though it later claimed to have destroyed many more pieces of equipment.

Moscow said it had struck Ukrainian positions on the western edge of Sudzha, a town about 8km from the border that appeared to be the focus of Kyiv’s offensive, Agence France-Presse reported. Russian media shared a video purporting to show Sudzha residents appealing to Vladimir Putin for help, warning that many were unable to evacuate. Thousands have been evacuated from the border region, with Russia putting on an extra train to Moscow from the regional capital, Kursk. At a train station in Moscow, AFP journalists saw families disembarking with children.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, urged Ukraine and Russia on Friday to show “maximum restraint” in fighting in the Kursk region, site of one of Russia’s largest nuclear power stations. Russia’s diplomatic mission in Vienna, quoted by Russian news agencies, said it had told the International Agency for Atomic Energy that fragments had been found at the station, possibly from downed missiles, but there was no evidence of any direct attack.

Ukraine expanded its own evacuation zone in the Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk, on Friday. “About 20,000 people need to be evacuated” from 28 settlements, Ukraine’s police force said. Ukraine also said it had carried out a major airstrike on a Russian military base in the Lipetsk region, about 280km from the Russia-Ukraine border. It struck “warehouses containing guided aerial bombs and a number of other facilities”, it said. Videos online showed huge explosions.

Russia introduced anti-terrorism measures early on Saturday in three regions bordering Ukraine, Russian news agencies quoted officials as saying. The agencies quoted regional governors or the national anti-terrorism committee as saying the special regime would apply to the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions. The RIA news agency said the measures included possible displacement of residents, limits on transport in specific areas, beefed-up security around sensitive sites, and wire taps of telephone and other communications.

Ukrainian special forces conducted an amphibious raid on the Russian-occupied Kinburn Spit in the Black Sea’s north-west on Friday, destroying six Russian armoured vehicles and about three dozen personnel, Ukrainian military intelligence agency said. Moscow’s military vantage point on the spit is seen as one of the reasons Ukraine cannot reopen its ports of Mykolaiv and Kherson and export goods from them via its Black Sea shipping corridor. Russia’s defence ministry claimed the raid was repelled, with some of the Ukrainian forces foundering on mines and the rest gunned down, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported. There was no independent confirmation.

Russian forces had taken the village of Vesele near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Russian agencies reported the defence ministry as saying on Friday. Pokrovsk lies on a main road that serves as an important supply route to other towns under Ukrainian government control such as Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka.

Last month was the deadliest month for Ukraine’s civilians since October 2022, the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said, as Russia stepped up bombardments. “The high number of casualties in July continued an alarming trend of increasing civilian casualties since March 2024,” it said.

The US announced a $125m military aid package for Ukraine that would include Stinger missiles, artillery ammunition and anti-armour systems. The military assistance would be the tenth tranche of equipment for Ukraine since Joe Biden signed a national security supplemental package in April, said the president’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby.

The US, UK and Canada unveiled sweeping sanctions against Belarus on Friday to mark the fourth anniversary of a contested presidential election that returned Alexander Lukashenko as president. The US treasury said it had sanctioned 19 people, 14 companies and an aeroplane for evading existing sanctions and for supporting Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. Earlier on Friday the UK announced fresh sanctions against four individuals and three businesses, while Canadian sanctions were against 10 individuals and six entities.