Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv and Kharkiv under missile attack

Medical personnel and law enforcement officers provide medical assistance to a local resident injured as a result of a missile attack in Kharkiv.

LIVE – Updated at 10:31

Turkey’s parliament to debate Sweden’s Nato bid; US Senate works on compromise for Ukraine aid but Maga Republicans refuse support.

10:31

The Russian military does not target civilians when it hits objects in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Tuesday when asked to comment on what Ukraine said were deadly Russian strikes on the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that Russia had unleashed a mass airstrike on the cities, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others, Reuters reports.

Asked if the strikes were Moscow’s response to what Russia said was a Ukrainian artillery attack on the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday that killed 27 people, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters:

No, you cannot say that. We are continuing our special military operation and our military does not hit social facilities and residential neighbourhoods and does not hit civilians, unlike the Kyiv regime.

This is what fundamentally distinguishes our military from the military of the Kyiv regime.

10:29

Emergency services help the wounded and search for survivors after the airstrike in Kharkiv. Here are some of the latest images showing the aftermath from the news wires:

Casualties as Russian strikes target Kyiv and Kharkiv

10:00

Three people were killed and at least 60 wounded in the latest series of Russian airstrikes on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials have said.

Russia unleashed a mass airstrike on Ukraine on Tuesday, mostly targeting the country’s two largest cities, the capital Kyiv and Kharkiv in the east.

On Telegram, governor Oleh Synehubov said three people were killed and 42 wounded in Kharkiv in strikes on apartment buildings.

In Kyiv, 20 people including three children had been wounded across at least three districts, and that several apartments and non-residential buildings had caught fire, mayor Vitalii Klitschko said.

09:38

The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been placed in solitary confinement for 10 days in a prison above the Arctic Circle for “incorrectly introducing himself” to a guard, his spokesperson said.

Navalny, 47, a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning president Vladimir Putin’s elite and voicing allegations of vast corruption, is now in a jail about 60km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.

Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson said on X that it was the 25th time Navalny had been placed in solitary confinement and that he had spent 283 days in such conditions.

Sentenced to stay in prison until he is 74 on charges he says were trumped up to keep him out of politics, Navalny said on Monday that he was being forced to listen to a pro-Putin pop singer at 5am every morning after being played the Russian national anthem, Reuters reports.

The Russian authorities cast Navalny as a fraudulent western-backed extremist out to up-end political stability and sew chaos across the world’s largest country, something he denies.

09:09

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had invited Sweden’s prime minister to visit and negotiate his country joining the Nato military alliance, a process that Hungary and Turkey have delayed.

On X, Orban said:

Today I sent an invitation letter to prime minister Ulf Kristersson for a visit to Hungary to negotiate on Sweden’s Nato accession.

Summary

08:53

This is the latest instalment in the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine. Here are the developments:

A Russian missile attack has hit Kyiv and Kharkiv. Ukrainian officials said at least six people were killed and dozens wounded in the Tuesday morning attack.

Russia’s foreign minister has clashed with the US and Ukraine’s other supporters at the UN security council after Moscow ruled out any peace plan backed by Kyiv and the west, and China warned that further global chaos could affect the slowing world economy.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, told the security council that peace plans presented by Ukraine and the west were “a road to nowhere”. The US deputy ambassador, Robert Wood, countered that it was Vladimir Putin’s “single-minded pursuit of the obliteration of Ukraine and subjugation of its people that is prolonging” the war that began with Moscow’s 2022 invasion.

The Turkish parliament’s general assembly will debate Sweden’s Nato membership bid on Tuesday, three sources from parliament said. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been blocking Sweden’s membership to extract concessions from Sweden and other Nato members. The parliament’s foreign affairs commission has approved the bid, raising hopes that it will be approved by the full parliament and signed into law by Erdoğan.

A Mexican border security deal in the US Senate is being finalised in a compromise aimed at unlocking Republican support to replenish US wartime aid for Ukraine. But far-right House Republicans under the sway of Donald Trump have indicated that they want to block any bipartisan deal in order to hamper Joe Biden’s prospects for re-election as president – even if it leaves chaos at the US-Mexico border. “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican, told CNN.

Moderate Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw has criticised Maga Republicans not willing to work with Biden on border security. Crenshaw told MSNBC that some Republicans were saying “we’ll never vote for it if it’s attached to Ukraine aid. Really? We get meaningful border policy with the Ukraine aid and you’re not going to vote for that? … Some people say Biden wants it now because it’s helpful to him politically? OK! I want border security, that’s what I told my constituents I would do for them. So if we can get that deal, that’s a no-brainer.”

EU foreign ministers have met to discuss support to Ukraine. With ministers focusing also on the situation in the Middle East, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, insisted that Ukrainians should not worry and that the EU’s support for Kyiv would continue as strong as ever.

Borrell also said Ukraine “needs more and faster military support now”. Latvia’s foreign minister, Krišjānis Kariņš, said that “if we do not help Ukraine stop Russia now, it will be only all the more expensive for us later”.

Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, said there was a need to fulfil Ukraine’s immediate defence needs, but that Europe also needed to ramp up its defence industry and capabilities.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, announced a proposal aimed at allowing ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants abroad to hold Ukrainian citizenship.

Zelenskiy said he had “very productive talks” with Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who visited Kyiv. The Ukrainian leader said the two countries would be able to resolve problematic issues. Tusk underlined that Warsaw and Kyiv would work in a spirit of friendship to resolve differences.

Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, said he “discussed the free movement of goods across the border” with Tusk and that the sides agreed to resume intergovernmental consultations.

There is movement toward a meeting between Zelenskiy and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a senior Ukrainian official has said.

The UK has updated its travel advice “to advise against all but essential travel” to the regions of Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Chernivtsi in western Ukraine. Previously, there was advice against all travel to the whole of Ukraine.

The Kremlin has drawn up a bill to confiscate property and valuables from Ukraine war critics convicted of, among other crimes, “discrediting the Russian army” or calling for foreign sanctions.

08:49

Russia launched a missile strike on Kyiv and the region surrounding the capital, a Ukrainian military official said on Tuesday.

“Air defence engaged in Kyiv. Stay in shelters until the air-raid alarm goes off!” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, posted online.

The Kyiv region’s military administration said air defence systems were engaged in repelling Russia’s missile attack.

08:48

Russia launched 41 missiles at Ukraine early on Tuesday and air defences destroyed 21 of them, the Ukrainian military said.

On Telegram, Ukraine’s air force said:

The enemy launched a combined missile attack on Ukraine, using cruise, ballistic, air and anti-aircraft guided missiles.

As a result of combat operations, the air force, in cooperation with the Air Defence Forces, destroyed 15 X-101/X-555/X-55 cruise missiles; 5 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 1 X-59 guided missile.