Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelensky calls for more long-range weapons after seven killed in Zaporizhzhia

Russian missiles slammed into a town in southern Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including children, and wounding dozens, local authorities reported.

Ukrainian officials published photos of bodies stretched out under picnic blankets in a park in Vilniansk, and deep craters in the blackened earth next to the charred, twisted remains of a building.

At least 38 people were wounded in Saturday evening’s attack, authorities said, and declared a day of mourning Sunday. Vilniansk is in the Zaporizhzhia region, less than 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the local capital and north of the front lines, as Russian forces continue to occupy part of the province.

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Long-serving Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged his country to support Ukraine and international cooperation in his final address to his compatriots Sunday, as an inward-looking new government is set to take over the Netherlands in two days.

“It is crucial that our country is embedded in the European Union and NATO. Together we are stronger than alone. Especially now,” the 57-year-old Rutte said from his office in The Hague.

After leading the country for 14 years, he will take his experience with consensus-building to Brussels, where he will take over as NATO’s new secretary-general later this year.

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Drone footage from Ukraine’s military released Sunday has shown what appears to be bodies in a civilian area in the embattled eastern town of Toretsk, which has come under heavy Russian bombardment in recent days.

The attacks in the war-torn Donetsk region have prompted a scaled-up evacuation effort by Ukrainian rescue services. Local officials said that powerful Russian glide bombs have also been used in the town, the latest eastern front flash point as Russian attacks continue to put stretched Ukrainian front-line units on the defensive.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Russia had dropped more than 800 glide bombs in Ukraine in the past week alone.

“Ukraine needs the necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs, including Russian combat aircraft, wherever they are. This step is essential,” he wrote in an online post.

Russia is planning to send children to a summer camp in North Korea in late July, according to state news agency TASS.

This follows the signing of a strategic deal by Russia and North Korea on 19 June.

Groups of children accompanied by counsellors will attend the camps in North Korea’s Sondovon.

“We are now planning joint camp shifts… We are planning children’s exchanges,” Grigory Gurov, head of the Russian youth group Movement of the First, said, according to The Kyiv Independent.

Russian forces have taken over the villages of Spirne and Novooleksandrivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Russian news agency RIA quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying on Sunday.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has renewed his call for more long-range weapons after seven people were killed in a Russian strike.

The Russian attack on the town of Vilniansk, near the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, also injured 31 others, Ukrainian officials said.

“Our cities and communities suffer daily from such Russian strikes,” Mr Zelensky said after the attack which left two children dead.

But he added that there were “ways to overcome this”, including “destroying Russian missile launchers, striking with real long-range capability and increasing the number of modern air defence systems”.

Four employees of Russia’s ministry of emergency situations were injured in Ukraine’s shelling of the Donetsk region, the ministry said on Sunday.

“In the Petrovsky district, department firefighters (the employees) were extinguishing a fire that occurred after (Ukrainian) shelling,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. “There was an alert for a new artillery strike. The shelling hit them as they were evacuating.”

Donetsk is one of four regions in Ukraine’s east and south that Russia claimed to have annexed in late 2022 in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the UN General Assembly. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions.

Russia is planning to send children to a summer camp in North Korea in late July, according to state news agency TASS.

This follows the signing of a strategic deal by Russia and North Korea on 19 June.

Groups of children accompanied by counsellors will attend the camps in North Korea’s Sondovon.

“We are now planning joint camp shifts… We are planning children’s exchanges,” Grigory Gurov, head of the Russian youth group Movement of the First, said, according to The Kyiv Independent.