Ukraine condemns ‘absolute terrorism’ as Russia pounds civilian sites in Kharkiv

Russian shelling of Ukraine’s second-largest city has killed at least six people and injured 31 including children, the local administrator said, hours after three missile strikes on Kharkiv that the official described as “absolute terrorism”.

Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said the shelling came from multiple rocket launchers, and those taken to hospital included children aged four and 16.

“Only civilian structures — a shopping centre and houses of peaceful Kharkiv residents — came under the fire of the Russians,” he said. “Several shells hit the yards of private houses. Garages and cars were also destroyed. Several fires broke out.”

Earlier, he said one of the missiles the Russian forces launched on Kharkiv overnight destroyed a school, another hit a residential building and the third landed near warehouse facilities.

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“All [three were launched] exclusively on civilian objects. This is absolute terrorism,” Mr Syniehubov said.

The strikes came two days after a Russian rocket attack struck apartment buildings in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 30 people. The strike late on Saturday destroyed three buildings in a residential quarter of the town of Chasiv Yar, inhabited mostly by people who work in nearby factories.

A total of nine people have been rescued from the rubble but more are still believed trapped, emergency officials said.

Russian attacks in the east have continued, with the governor of the Luhansk region saying on Monday that the shelling hit settlements on the administrative border with the Donetsk region. Kremlin forces carried out five missile strikes and four large rounds of shelling in the area, Serhiy Haidai said.

The Luhansk and Donetsk regions make up Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland known as Donbas, where separatist rebels have fought Ukrainian forces since 2014. Russia earlier this month captured the last big stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, the city of Lysychansk.

After the seizure of Lysychansk some analysts predicted Moscow’s troops would take some time to rearm and regroup but Ukrainian officials said there had been no pause in attacks.

The British military assessed that Russian troops were not getting necessary breaks. The ministry of defence wrote on Twitter that online videos suggested at least one tank brigade in the war was “mentally and physically exhausted” as it had been on active combat duty since the start of the war in February.

It said: “The lack of scheduled breaks from intense combat conditions is highly likely one of the most damaging of the many personnel issues the Russian [defence ministry] is struggling to rectify amongst the deployed force.”

In a separate development, Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a decree expanding a fast track to Russian citizenship for all Ukrainians.

Until recently, only residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as people in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions — large parts of which are under Russian control — were eligible for the simplified procedure.

Between 2019, when the procedure was first introduced for residents of Donetsk and Luhansk, and this year more than 720,000 residents of the rebel-held areas in the two regions — about 18 per cent of the population — have received Russian passports.

In late May this year, three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the fast-track procedure was also offered to residents of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. A month ago the first Russian passports were reportedly handed out there.

The decree also applies for any stateless residents in Ukraine. On Monday evening Ukrainian officials had not yet reacted to Mr Putin’s announcement.

The passport move appears to be part of a strategy by the Russian leader that also involves annexation of territory into the Russian Federation. Mr Putin set the stage for such moves before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, writing an essay last summer claiming Russians and Ukrainians were one people and attempting to diminish the legitimacy of Ukraine as an independent nation.