Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky condemns ‘pure terrorism’ as Putin’s forces hit Kharkiv with fresh strikes

Russia expects that the Ukrainian authorities will soon be able to take the necessary decisions for the exchange of prisoners of war and the transfer of the bodies of killed Ukrainian servicemen, the Russian Defence Ministry has claimed.

“To date, Kyiv has not given its consent to conduct the humanitarian operations. Representatives of the Ukrainian contact group did not arrive at the meeting place. We do not know the reason for the delay,” the ministry said, citing deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin.

Ukraine rejected Russian allegations earlier on Saturday that it had indefinitely postponed prisoner swaps. Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said Moscow should stop “playing dirty games” and return to constructive work.

“Today’s statements by the Russian side do not correspond to reality or to previous agreements on either the exchange of prisoners or the repatriation of bodies,” he said on the Telegram app.

Tomorrow’s editorial in The Independent states:

Donald Trump has been shown to be wrong, wrong and wrong again about Vladimir Putin. He was wrong again when he was asked if Ukraine’s “Spiderweb” drone strikes against Russian bombers had changed his view of the cards the Ukrainians have: “They gave Putin a reason to go and bomb the hell out of them,” he said.

This is the same logic to which President Trump has cleaved from the start: that the Ukrainian people provoked the full-scale invasion of their country by wanting to be an independent nation facing to the west.

It seemed that Mr Trump had been briefly disabused of the notion that Mr Putin wanted peace when the Russian president ignored several long telephone conversations with him and continued to bombard Ukraine, causing significant civilian casualties. “He has gone absolutely crazy,” Mr Trump said last month. “Needlessly killing a lot of people.”

But Mr Trump responded to this month’s Russian bombardment, described by the mayor of Kharkiv as the “most powerful attack since the start of the full-scale war”, by blaming the Ukrainians for giving Mr Putin a reason for intensifying the summer offensive.

Any other US president would have congratulated Volodymyr Zelensky on the attacks, which will go down in the history of special operations warfare as a brilliantly executed surprise.

It turns out that when Mr Trump shamefully told Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office, “You don’t have the cards,” he was mistaken.

Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned “savage” Russian strikes on Kharkiv which have left at least four people dead and dozens of people wounded in Ukraine’s second city over the past 24 hours.

Referring to the second batch of strikes on Saturday afternoon, which followed overnight strikes that killed three people, the Ukrainian president said: “As of now, over 40 people have been reported injured and one person killed in Kharkiv due to a Russian aerial bomb strike.

“This is another savage killing. Aerial bombs were dropped on civilians in the city – there is even a children’s railway nearby. This makes no military sense. This is pure terrorism. And this has been going on for more than three years of the full-scale war.

“This cannot be ignored. This cannot be turned a blind eye to. And this is not some kind of game. Every day, we lose our people only because Russia feels it can act with impunity. Russia must be firmly forced into peace.”

Here are the comments from Donald Trump that have sparked anger in Moscow, as the US president likened the war to “two young children like crazy, they hate each other, they’re fighting in a park”, adding: “Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while”.

One person has been killed and 18 people injured in a guided bomb strike on Kharkiv, the city’s mayor has said.

In an attack which comes just hours after three were killed and 21 wounded in an overnight assault on the city, mayor Igor Terekhov said fresh Russian strikes had caused more casualties on Saturday afternoon.

The latest assault brings the total number of people killed in the city to four, with at least 39 others wounded.

The “meat grinder” assaults by Russian infantry have almost stopped, reports The Independent’s Sam Kiley.

In a report from the world affairs editor, Ukrainian officers have told The Independent that Russian artillery bombardments have fallen away as drones have easily tracked and destroyed the big guns of the traditional battlefield.

And Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, in which Kyiv claimed to have destroyed or damaged a third of Russia’s strategic bombers along with some spy planes in a staggering long-range, long-term operation that hit Russian airfields 5,000km apart, has greatly boosted morale.

Along with ongoing long-range assaults with drones on Moscow’s airports, its energy infrastructure, and commanders themselves, Ukraine has turned the tactics of hybrid warfare developed by Russia back on Putin.

Residents of the homes damaged by Russia’s strikes in Kharvkiv describe their buildings going up in flames.

Alina Belous said that she had tried to extinguish flames with buckets of water to rescue a young girl trapped inside a burning building who had called out for help, AP news reports.

“We were trying to put it out ourselves with our buckets, together with our neighbours. Then the rescuers arrived and started helping us put out the fire, but there was smok,e and they worried that we couldn’t stay there. When the ceiling started falling off, they took us out,” she said.

Local resident Vadym Ihnachenko said that he thought at first that it was a neighboring building going up in flames.

“But when we saw sparks coming from the top, we realized it was our building.”

Here’s what you need to know following the latest outbreak of attacks in the Russia/Ukraine war.

On Friday, Russia struck six Ukrainian territories, killing at least six people and wounding about 80. Among the dead were three emergency responders in Kyiv, one person in Lutsk and two people in Chernihiv.

President Trump also said that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while”Meanwhile, later on Saturday, Russia and Ukraine each accused the other of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress towards ending the war.

Reports by Associated Press

Ukrainian officials said on Saturday, urging Moscow to stop “playing dirty games” and return to constructive work, according to reports from Reuters.

Vladimir Medinsky, Kremlin aide, claimed on Saturday that Ukraine had unexpectedly postponed exchanging prisoners of war and accepting the bodies of killed soldiers for an indefinite period.

Ukraine has now denied this. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said that there was no fixed date for the return of bodies and that Russia was not sticking to the agreed parameters of the PoW swap, accusing Moscow of “dirty games” and “manipulations.”

The second round of peace talks in Istanbul ended with an agreement to swap more prisoners of war.

The two sides committed to returning the bodies of 12,000 soldiers and to swap all sick and heavily wounded prisoners of war. They also agreed to swap those who are aged under 25.

Ukrainian negotiators said Russia had again rejected an “unconditional ceasefire”.

However, the Russian team proposed a two or three-day truce “in certain areas” of the vast front line.