Russian Strike on Ukraine's Kharkiv Leaves Six Dead, Dozens Injured

Among the victims was a 14-year-old girl, according to Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, with 55 others reported injured.

A Russian attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has claimed the lives of at least six people, including a 14-year-old girl, and left dozens more injured, according to Ukrainian officials.

'The occupiers killed a child right on the playground,' Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov stated on the Telegram messaging app on Friday.

Three others lost their lives in a 12-story apartment building that caught fire due to the attack, according to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

'Unfortunately, the death toll has now risen to six,' Kharkiv Regional Governor Oleg Synegubov announced in a post on Telegram hours after the incident.

Interior Minister Igor Klymenko confirmed that a 14-year-old girl was among those killed, and at least 55 people were injured.

A video shared by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, showed massive flames and thick black smoke billowing from the upper floors of a residential building.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and its surrounding region have been frequent targets of Russian attacks, particularly through the use of highly destructive guided bombs.

Moscow’s forces attempted to capture Kharkiv in the early stages of their invasion but were repelled. They renewed their ground offensive in the Kharkiv region in May.

We need decisive action from our partners to end this terror," Zelenskyy urged in a social media post.

We require long-range capabilities," he added, emphasizing Kyiv’s calls for allies to lift restrictions on the use of Western-supplied missiles within Russian territory.

The implementation of air defense agreements for Ukraine is crucial. This is about saving lives," he stressed.

Earlier, Russian raids in the Sumy region, which borders Kharkiv, left at least two people dead and eight wounded, according to local authorities.

The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that its forces do not target civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Also on Friday, Russia announced that its forces had captured three more villages in eastern Ukraine, even as Kyiv continues its major cross-border assault into Russian territory.

In a briefing posted on its Telegram page, Russia’s defense ministry stated that its forces had taken control of settlements in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv regions.

Moscow seems to be concentrating its firepower on the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk, where Kyiv reports the fighting is intense and 'difficult.

The most challenging situation remains in the Pokrovsk direction, where the enemy is attempting to breach our defenses," Ukraine's commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, reported on Friday.

He also mentioned that Kyiv's forces continue to advance in Russia's western Kursk region, where they claimed earlier this week to have taken control of 100 border settlements.

Meanwhile, European Union defense ministers have agreed that the bloc’s training of Ukrainian forces should occur as close as possible to the war-torn country but not on Ukrainian soil, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced on Friday.

Following a meeting of the ministers in Brussels, Borrell also stated that they had agreed to expand the EU’s training mission, aiming to train 75,000 Ukrainian troops by the end of the year, up from the 60,000 trained so far.

Several EU countries, including Estonia, France, and Sweden, support training soldiers within Ukraine, but others, such as Hungary, are concerned that such a move could escalate the conflict.