Russia-Ukraine war live: more explosions after missile strikes hit residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia

Ukraine’s governor of Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Starukh, has issued an update on the strikes in Zaporizhzhia this morning, revising the death toll down to one for now. He writes:

So far it is known about the death of one woman. The death of another person has not been confirmed. Thanks to the doctors, her life was saved. Seven people were injured of varying degrees of severity, they were treated, including one three-year-old child. The rescue operation is still ongoing. The number of victims may vary. The number of victims could have been much higher, but thanks to the timely and professional actions of the Zaporizhzhia state emergency service, 21 victims were already saved.

Russia hit the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with seven rockets, flattening an apartment building on early on Thursday morning. The city’s authorities told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne at least two have died and at least another five are trapped under the rubble. Rescue workers at the scene said they saved one three-year-old girl.

Zaporizhzhia’s branch of Suspline reported more explosions in the city at mid-morning Kyiv time.

Oleksandr Starukh, Ukraine’s governor of Zaporizhzhia, said on Telegram: “Attention. Another enemy missile attack. Stay in shelters”.

Russia launched two rockets at the central Ukrainian city of Khmelnytsky, but both reportedly missed their targets.

Elsewhere, Russia used what the Ukrainian authorities say are Iranian-supplied kamikaze drones to target the cities of Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. Ukraine’s military say they managed to shoot down 18 additional drones before they reached Odesa and Mykolaiv.

As the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont reported, the Iranian drones are able to remain airborne for several hours and circle over potential targets, the drones are designed to be flown into enemy troops, armour or buildings, exploding on impact – explaining their description as kamikaze drones.

The city of Zaporizhzhia is the administrative centre of the Zaporizhzhia region which Russia claims to have annexed.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled leader of the democratic opposition in Belarus, has commented on today’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia, saying:

The Russian attack on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia is another shameful act of terror against the population of Ukraine. Thousands of innocent adults & children have paid with their lives for Putin and Lukashenko’s war. They lose on the battlefield & take revenge on civilians.

Oleksandr Starukh, Ukraine’s governor of Zaporizhzhia, has alerted people to an another attack on Telegram, posting “Attention. Another enemy missile attack. Stay in shelters”.

If you need a reminder, this animated map posted by Ukraine’s minister of defence Oleksii Reznikov yesterday shows the territory that the Ukrainian armed forces have claimed to recapture during their counteroffensive over the last month.

The BBC’s Paul Adams reports hearing three more loud explosions in Zaporizhzhia in the last few minutes.

Kirill Stremousov, one of the Russian-imposed leaders in the occupied region of Kherson which the Russian Federation has claimed to annex, has been very vocal on Telegram in the last couple of days, attempting to counter any narrative that Ukrainian forces are making any progress in the south. This morning he has, without presenting evidence, again asserted that the defences in Kherson are holding. He said:

The situation in the Kherson region is unchanged. The Kherson region is holding back the onslaught of the Ukronazis who are trying to break into Kherson. We repeat once again that despite the panic that is dispersed in the media, in the Kherson region, the ministry of defence and the Russian Guard stand to the death. The advances of the Ukronazis, fascists, Germans, Americans and other mercenaries have been stopped.

The Russian Federation has signed into law an annexation of the Kherson region, despite not fully controlling it.

Leaders of 44 European countries on Thursday in Prague will send a clear signal of Russia’s isolation and try to create a new order without Moscow, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said this morning.

“The meeting is looking for a new order without Russia,” Reuters reports he told reporters in Prague.

The Kremlin has published details of the decree that Vladimir Putin signed yesterday to “correct” aspects of the partial mobilisation. Russian state media RIA Novosti reports:

According to the decree, the deferment is granted to those who receive education of the appropriate level for the first time in full-time and part-time (evening) forms of education. Students, graduate students and residents enrolled in state-accredited programmes of secondary and higher professional education also have this right.

In addition, the basis for the postponement will be training in organisations located on the territories of innovative scientific and technological centres, as well as in spiritual educational organisations.

Ukraine’s ministry of internal affairs has confirmed that seven Russian rocket attacks hit the city of Zaporizhzhia overnight. It says that first responders are present, and that “work is ongoing, all relevant services are on site”.

Regional governor, Oleksandr Starukh, earlier said that one woman was confirmed to have died in the attack while another person died in an ambulance. “At least five people are under the rubble of buildings,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday morning.

Images posted by the ministry included pictures of debris on fire, and rescue workers clambering through the rubble of a destroyed high-rise building, which had collapsed on to cars parked in front of it.

Ivan Fedorov, Ukraine’s elected mayor of Melitopol, said on Telegram: “Dozens of people are under the rubble. The number of victims increases every hour. This is how the Russian terrorist hits civilians with its ‘high-precision’ weapons. It hits civilians and infrastructure, because it demonstrates to the whole world its worthlessness on the battlefield.”

The city of Zaporizhzhia is the administrative centre of the Zaporizhzhia oblast, one of the regions of Ukraine that Russia has claimed to annex, despite not controlling all of the territory there.

Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv, has posted a status update to Telegram to report no casualties overnight in his region. However he says that the region was again attacked by Shahed-136 “kamikaze drones”, and that some residential and farm buildings as well as agricultural lands has been damaged. The claims have not been independently verified.

The Russian-imposed authorities in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, occupied Ukrainian territory which the Russian Federation has claimed to annex, have issued casualty figures for the last 24 hours. They claim that six civilians have been wounded and three killed by shelling from Ukrainian armed forces. Additionally they say that 12 houses and five civil infrastructure facilities were damaged. The claims have not been independently verified.

Before I hand you over to my colleague Martin Belam here is a rundown of where things stand as of 9am in Ukraine.

• Two people have been killed after Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia was allegedly hit by Russian missiles in the early hours of Thursday morning. Regional governor, Oleksandr Starukh, said one woman was confirmed to have died in the attack while another person died in an ambulance. “At least five people are under the rubble of buildings,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday morning. Starukh earlier alleged Russia “fired 7 rockets at high-rise buildings” while rescuers continue to pull people out from under the rubble.

• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has appeared to admit severe losses in Ukraine, conceding the severity of the Kremlin’s recent military reversals and insisting Russia would “stabilise” the situation in four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – it illegally claimed as its own territory last week. “We are working on the assumption that the situation in the new territories will stabilise,” Putin told Russian teachers during a televised video call on Wednesday.

• The UN nuclear agency chief is en route to Kyiv to discuss creating a security zone around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after Putin ordered his government to take it over. “On our way to Kyiv for important meetings,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi wrote on Twitter, saying the need for a protection zone around the site was “more urgent than ever”. Grossi is also expected to visit Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation at the plant.

• Ukraine’s forces are pushing their advance in the east and south, forcing Russian troops to retreat under pressure on both fronts. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s military had made major, rapid advances against Russian forces in the past week, taking back dozens of towns in regions in the south and east that Russia has declared annexed. Military experts say Russia is at its weakest point, partly because of its decision not to mobilise earlier and partly because of massive losses of troops and equipment.

• Ukraine has extended its area of control in the Kherson region by six to 12 miles, according to its military’s southern command. Zelenskiy confirmed the recapture of the villages of Novovoskresenske, Novohryhorivka and Petropavlivka, saying the settlements were “liberated from the sham referendum and stabilised,” in an address on Wednesday. Kherson region’s Moscow-appointed governor, Kirill Stremousov, said the withdrawal was a tactical “regrouping” to “deliver a retaliatory blow”. The extent of Russia’s retreat remains unclear.

• Moscow’s forces have left behind smashed towns once under occupation and, in places, mass burial sites and evidence of torture chambers. In Lyman, which was retaken by Ukrainian forces on Sunday, more than 50 graves have been found, some marked with names, others with numbers, the Kyiv-based outlet Hromadske reported on Wednesday.

• The UN has warned Russia’s claimed annexation of Ukraine territory will only exacerbate human rights violations. Christian Salazar Volkmann, said UN experts had documented “a range of violations of the rights to life, liberty and security” and warned the situation would only worsen as Russia pushes forward with the annexation of some Ukrainian regions.

• European leaders are set to meet in Prague on Thursday in the face of Russia’s war. Leaders from Ukraine, Britain and Turkey will join their EU counterparts in Prague on Thursday for a summit aimed at bringing the continent together in the face of Russia’s aggression. The gathering has been billed by Brussels as a “platform for political coordination” for the disparate 44 nations attending.

• Attempts to play down retreats in Ukraine are no longer washing inside Russia with the latest military failures spilling on to local television screens. “Why do we advance metre by metre when they advance village by village?” Olga Skabeyeva, the country’s top state-TV host, asked a Russia-appointed official in Luhansk in a recent broadcast. Pro-war military bloggers and journalists are also criticising the Kremlin and painting a bleak picture of deteriorating Russian morale.

• Russia is lobbying for a secret ballot instead of a public vote when the 193-member UN General Assembly next week considers whether to condemn Moscow’s move to annex four partially occupied regions in Ukraine.

• The car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of prominent Russian political figure Alexander Dugin, was allegedly authorised by elements within the Ukrainian government, according to US intelligence sources who spoke with the New York Times and CNN. The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, the officials said.

Attempts to play down retreats in Ukraine are no longer washing inside Russia with the latest military failures spilling on to Russian television screens.

“Why do we advance metre by metre when they advance village by village?” Olga Skabeyeva, the country’s top state-TV host, asked a Russia-appointed official in Luhansk in a recent broadcast.

Pro-war military bloggers and journalists are also criticising the Kremlin and painting a bleak picture of deteriorating Russian morale.

Roman Saponkov, a prominent war correspondent, described his despair over the pullback in Kherson on his Telegram channel:

Friends, I know you’re waiting for me to comment on the situation. But I really don’t know what to say to you. The retreat … is catastrophic.”

Aleksandr Kots, a pro-Kremlin journalist who travels with with the Russian army, added: “We do not have enough people … fatigue has set in … there is no longer any strength left to hold on to the territories won.”