Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that a Russian missile strike on a residential building in the Odessa region that killed at least 21 people on Friday morning was no accident, but a targeted missile strike by Russia.
Zelensky called the attack an act of terror and said that the missile used was designed to target aircraft carriers and other warships. Russia has fired over 3,000 missiles at Ukraine since the war began, according to Zelensky.
So far, 21 people were known to have died and another 40 were injured in the attack, Zelensky said, adding: "Unfortunately, the death toll is rising."
"It was a simple apartment building with about 160 people - ordinary people, civilians - living in it," he said in a video message on Friday night. The building was not being used to store any weaponry or military equipment "as Russian propagandists and officials always tell us about such attacks," he added.
Twelve Russian missiles also hit the southern city of Mykolaiv "just in one night and one morning," Zelensky said, conveying his condolences to the victims' friends and families.
"Such an atrocity only underscores how right our partners were in deciding to support Ukraine," Zelensky said, adding that no state should be left alone "when there is such evil."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of waging war on civilians. "I urge our partners to provide Ukraine with modern missile defence systems as soon as possible. Help us save lives and put an end to this war," he tweeted late on Friday.
Meanwhile, Russian Defence Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said that the oil refinery in the city of Lysychansk - which has been the focus of heavy fighting in recent days - was now in the hands of Russian troops and pro-Russian separatists. The Ukrainian side, however, reported on Friday morning that fighting was ongoing.
Lysychansk is the last major city in the Luhansk region still held by Ukraine. Control of the region, which, with neighbouring Donetsk, forms the Donbass, is one of Moscow's key aims in its four-month old invasion of Ukraine.
However, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian units had successfully repelled a Russian attack on a gelatine plant near Lysychansk, while Ukrainian military positions had come under heavy Russian artillery fire along the entire front line in eastern and southern Ukraine on Friday.
A day after Russian troops withdrew from Ukraine's Snake Island in an apparent "gesture of goodwill," Ukraine accused Moscow of dropping phosphorus bombs on the strategically important Black Sea outpost.
Two sorties of Su-30 fighter jets were flown over the island from the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said on Telegram on Friday, posting a video of the bombing as proof.
Both Kiev and Washington rejected the notion that the Russian withdrawal had been undertaken in good faith, with a senior US Department of Defense official saying Ukrainian forces had made it very difficult for the Russians to sustain their operations there.
During a visit to Ukraine, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre pledged Kiev further support worth up to €1 billion ($1.04 billion). The European Commission, meanwhile, pledged a €1-billion loan to Ukraine to help the country fund essential services, while the US government promised Ukraine a fresh arms package worth $820 million.
The dispute over Lithuanian restrictions to transit traffic between Russia and its exclave of Kaliningrad continued, albeit with Moscow saying it hoped for a "rational solution."
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko warned the EU that the current situation was costing both Lithuania and the EU dearly, according to the Interfax news agency. Grushko later said he had the impression that "the signal has been received."
In mid-June, Lithuania banned the transit of some Russian goods on European sanctions lists through its territory to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Moscow has called the restrictions "illegal" and threatened countermeasures, though Grushko stressed that Russia had no plans to attack any NATO country, saying that only "sick people could think of that."
