At least ten people were killed in two consecutive Russian attacks on a hospital in Sumy. Initial shelling had killed one and damaged several floors of the building, but Russian forces struck again during the evacuation of the hospital’s patients, authorities said. At least 22 were reported injured in the attacks. Danielle Bell, head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, said “loitering munitions” – or suicide drones – hit the Saint Panteleimon clinical hospital in two attacks 45 minutes apart. “Most of the fatalities occurred during the second strike, which hit as first responders arrived at the site and patients attempted to evacuate,” she said. Sumy city is located 32 km (20 miles) from the Russian border.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, one day after his meeting with Donald Trump in New York, condemned the Sumy attack. “Everyone in the world who speaks about this war must pay attention to what Russia is targeting,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “They are waging war on hospitals, civilian objects, and people’s lives. Only strength can force Russia into peace. Peace through strength is the only right way.”
In addition to the ten killed on Saturday, at least seven other civilians were killed throughout Ukraine in the previous 24 hours, authorities said. Four were killed in Kryvyi Rih after a Russian missile struck a five-storey police administration building on Friday – authorities completed rescue efforts there on Saturday. Of the four killed in Kryvyi Rih, three were police officers. Meanwhile, other missile and airstrikes on residential areas of the Kherson, Donetsk and Odesa oblasts left dozens more injured.
Russia’s top diplomat warned on Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power”, delivering a UN general assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including inside the United Nations itself. Three days after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the west of using Ukraine as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically.
China’s foreign minister warned fellow leaders on Saturday against an “expansion of the battlefield” in the war and said the Beijing government remained committed to shuttle diplomacy and efforts to push the conflict toward its end. China, along with Brazil, has proposed new talks involving Kyiv and Moscow and this week gathered Global South countries behind that plan. Zelenskyy dismissed China and Brazil’s efforts, questioning why they were proposing an alternative to his own peace formula.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with Fox News aired on Saturday, said he had received “very direct information” from Donald Trump that the former US president would support Ukraine in the war against Russia if he is reelected in the November presidential election. Zelenskyy said: “I don’t know what will be after elections and who will be the president … But I’ve got from Donald Trump very direct information that he will be on our side, that he will support Ukraine.”
Two Russian attacks in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region killed four people on Saturday including a supreme court judge who was delivering aid to local residents in a civilian car, Ukrainian officials said. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said an air attack killed three people and injured at least three others in the village of Slatyne, which lies about 25 km (15 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv – the regional capital.
Russia is prepared to go to court over the Nord Stream pipeline explosions, with a foreign ministry spokesperson saying on Saturday that Russia has filed “pre-trial claims” against Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Maria Zakharova accused the west of attempting to “sweep the matter under the carpet”, maintaining that the explosions that ruptured the multi-billion dollar pipeline in September 2022 – seven months after Russia invaded Ukraine – were “an egregious act of international terrorism”.
Nato members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland will seek EU funding to build a network of bunkers, barriers, distribution lines and military warehouses along their borders with Russia and Belarus, Estonia’s officials have said. The three Baltic countries initially announced the plan for a “Baltic Defence Line” in January. In May, Poland announced a similar project called the “Eastern Shield” with the purpose of strengthening its borders with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus.
North Korea, which has been accused of illegally supplying weapons to Russia, said on Sunday that US military aid worth $8bn to Ukraine was “an incredible mistake” and playing with fire against nuclear superpower Russia. “The United States and the west should not dismiss or underestimate Russia’s serious warning,” Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said in a statement published by state news agency KCNA. Vladimir Putin has warned he could use nuclear weapons if Russia were to be hit with missiles. North Korea has shipped at least 16,500 containers of weapons to Russia since September last year and Russia has fired missiles from those shipments against Ukraine, the US has said.
