Russian strike on eastern Ukraine kills 17 as top US official visits Kyiv

At least 17 people have been killed and more than 30 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a central shopping area in the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine, as the embattled country installed a new defence minister and US secretary of state Antony Blinken visited its capital, Kyiv.

“Just now, an attack by the Russian terrorists killed 16 people in the city of Kostiantynivka, Donetsk region. An ordinary market. Shops. A pharmacy [were hit]. People who have done nothing wrong,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after the strike on Wednesday afternoon. “This Russian evil must be defeated as soon as possible.”

Footage from Kostiantynivka, which is about 25km west of the occupied frontline city of Bakhmut, showed a huge explosion in an area of small shops and market stalls, and bodies and belongings strewn among charred debris on blood-spattered streets.

The attack was one of the deadliest single strikes of recent months, and came hours after Mr Blinken arrived in Kyiv, some 650km to the west, and praised Ukraine’s counteroffensive and promised more support 18 months into the all-out Russian invasion.

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“We’ve seen good progress in the counteroffensive, which is very heartening,” Mr Blinken said as he paid tribute to fallen soldiers at a Kyiv cemetery, referring to a campaign launched in June to liberate swathes of southeastern Ukraine.

“We want to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs not only to succeed in the counteroffensive, but it has what it needs for the long term,” he added, before an expected announcement of more than $1 billion (€930 million) in additional US military aid for Kyiv.

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Mr Blinken was also expected to discuss ways to boost Ukrainian grain exports overland amid almost nightly Russian missile and drone attacks on cities on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, such as Odesa, and the smaller ports of Reni and Izmail on the Danube river.

Ukraine’s military said it shot down 23 of 33 missiles and explosive drones fired by Russia early on Wednesday, and that one person was killed in a strike on Izmail, where grain elevators, and administrative and agricultural buildings were damaged.

After repeated denials from senior officials in Bucharest, Romanian defence minister Angel Tilvar admitted that on Monday part of a Russian strike drone had landed on the territory of his country – a Nato member state – just across the Danube from Ukraine.

“I confirm that pieces of this drone were found in this area,” Romanian media quoted him as saying during a visit to the region on Wednesday. He added that his government did not see any need to consider evacuation of civilians from areas near Ukraine.

Moscow claims to be hitting military targets in Ukraine’s sea and river ports and says it will not rejoin a deal to safeguard Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea until the West makes it easier for Russia to sell its own food products and fertiliser on world markets.

Russian officials admitted for the first time that their troops had recently retreated from the village of Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia region, where Kyiv’s forces are focusing their counteroffensive, but framed it as a tactical and organised retreat.

Parliament in Kyiv approved Rustem Umerov (41) as the country’s new defence minister on Wednesday, after Oleksiy Reznikov resigned from the post at the request of Mr Zelenskiy, who said “new approaches” were needed at the ministry.

“Our main objective is victory,” said Mr Umerov, a member of Ukraine’s Crimean Tatar minority. “I will do everything possible and impossible for the victory of Ukraine – when we liberate every centimetre of our country and every one of our people.”