Russia Ukraine war latest news: 10 killed after Russian missile strikes residential building in port city

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the country’s fight in the east is fierce as Russia continues its weeks-long assualt to capture the separatist territory.

“The situation in Donbas remains the toughest, extremely difficult. The fire superiority of the occupiers is still extremely tangible – they have already taken everything from their reserves to hit us: the Luhansk region, the Donetsk region,” he said late on Thursday.

Mr Zelensky thanked the Ukrainian soldiers and said he is “grateful to everyone who defends our positions in such conditions”.

This is true heroism, he said.

He lauded the Ukrainian fighters including gunners, pilots of the army aviation and Air Force, the command of “Oleksandriya” for freeing the Snake Island from Russian forces after months.

“Undoubtedly, the main word today is Zmiinyi. Apparently, there was just as much talk about Zmiinyi only on the day when the Russian ship arrived there. Then the ship left – forever, and now the island is free again. I am grateful to the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, the fighters of “Alpha”, I am grateful to our gunners, pilots of the army aviation and Air Force, the command of ‘Oleksandriya’,” he said.

He added that the island, known as Zmiinyi Island in Ukraine, is a strategic point, and “significantly changes the situation in the Black Sea”.

“It does not guarantee safety yet, it does not yet guarantee that the enemy will not return. But it already limits the actions of the occupiers significantly. Step by step, we will drive them out of our sea, our land, and our sky,” Mr Zelensky said.

At least 10 people were killed after a Russian missile struck Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa early on Friday, regional official confirmed.

Preliminary reports indicated that at least six people, including three children, died in the night-time strike on a residential building.

Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for Odesa’s regional administration said: “The number of dead as a result of a strike on a multi-story apartment building has now risen to 10.”

This comes just hours after Ukraine expelled Russian forces from the key Black Sea outpost of Snake Island.

The missile had struck a nine-story apartment building in Ukraine’s Black Sea port, following which a section of the building collapsed.

Officials said that a rescue operation was underway as some people were reported buried under the ruble.

A thin-skinned Vladimir Putin has hit back at the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other Western leaders who mocked his tough-man topless exploits, with the Russian leader claiming they would look “disgusting” if they tried to copy him.

Earlier this week, Mr Johnson jested that G7 leaders could take their clothes off to “show that we’re tougher than Putin” amid Russia-West tensions over Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.

He added that we need to “show our pecs”.

The US treasury department has blocked a trust where sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov held a property inter
est.

“The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it has issued a Notification of Blocked Property to Heritage Trust, a Delaware-based trust in which OFAC-designated Russian oligarch Suleiman Abusaidovich Kerimov holds a property interest,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.

The trust held assets valued at over $1 billion as of Thursday, it added.

Boris Johnson sought to heal a cabinet rift by promising to hike defence spending to 2.5 per cent of Britain’s economic output by the end of the decade.

The prime minister wrapped up the Nato summit in Madrid with a pledge that could see more than £55bn added to military budgets this decade, following Ben Wallace’s pleas for more money.

However, senior Conservatives said the PM’s ambition remained “feeble” and the target too far off, given the gravity of the immediate threat from Vladimir Putin’s Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has lost another colonel – the 57th in just four months of war, as fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Kislyakov, 40, was buried on Thursday with full military honours in his hometown in the Moscow region.

Kislyakov, commander of a prestigious unit of Russian paratroopers, is the 57th known colonel to have been killed since president Putin ordered his troops to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Thomas Kingsley has more:

Boris Johnson has played down the estimated 35 nuclear threats made by president Vladimir Putin since the start his military operation – insisting instead that he would be able to overcome Ukrainian resistance by conventional means.

In an interview marking the end of the Nato summit in Spain, Mr Johnson told LBC’s Nick Ferrari : “I think it’s very, very important that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be side-tracked by this kind of sabre-rattling.

“Because fundamentally, what Putin is trying to do is to reframe this as about Russia versus Nato.

“It’s not. It’s about his attack on an entirely innocent country, with conventional weapons, with artillery, bombardments with planes, shells and so on.

“And it’s about the Ukrainians’ right to protect themselves. That is what this is about.

“And what we had today at Nato was, yet again, the alliance being tested, being asked, being interrogated. Are we resolved? Are we determined? Will we give the Ukrainians the means to protect themselves?

“And the answer was absolutely yes and, if anything, the strength of the unity is greater than it was before.”