US wading deeper into the Ukraine conflict

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the United States was wading deeper into the Ukraine conflict and making a mistake by providing Kyiv with long-range ATACMS missiles.

He told a news conference during a visit to China that he had briefed President Xi Jinping "in some detail" about Ukraine. He said "external factors" and "common threats" served only to strengthen Russia-Chinese cooperation.

The Kremlin chief said Washington's decision to supply the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), whose use Kyiv confirmed on Tuesday, "just prolongs the agony" for Ukraine.

"Firstly, this of course causes harm and creates an additional threat. Secondly, we will of course be able to repel these attacks. War is war," Putin said, according to Reuters.

"But most importantly, it fundamentally lacks the capacity to change the situation on the line of contact at all ... This is another mistake by the United States."

Meanwhile, Russian attacks overnight yesterday killed at least seven civilians in Ukraine and damaged the power grid in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.

In Pyongyang, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said  Russia "highly values" North Korea's support for its Ukraine campaign, with Western concerns mounting over the historic allies' deepening military ties, reports AFP.

In Ukraine, four civilians were killed in a morning missile strike on a residential building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, and a 31-year-old woman was killed in an attack on the village of Obukhivka in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, they said.

A man and a woman were also killed in an overnight attack on the southern region of Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the Telegram messaging app.

Officials in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-biggest city, said the local power grid was damaged in a Russian air strike and that outages were possible.

"The evil state continues to use terror and wage war on civilians. Russian terror must be defeated," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.

He also posted a photo of a five-storey building in Zaporizhzhia with a gaping hole in the middle, its entrance destroyed, windows smashed and debris scattered around it.

"Unfortunately, the number of people whose lives were stopped as a result of the overnight terrorist attack by the Russians has increased to four," Zaporizhzhia deputy mayor Anatoliy Kurtiev said. "Two more bodies were found during search and rescue operations today."

Lavrov's comments came as he began a two-day visit to Pyongyang that is expected to lay the groundwork for a trip by President Vladimir Putin.

"We highly value your principled, unambiguous support for Russia's actions in connection with the special military operation in Ukraine," Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia's RIA news agency.

The foreign minister's trip comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un travelled to Russia to meet Putin last month, his first trip abroad since the pandemic began.

Lavrov arrived in Pyongyang from Beijing, where Putin hailed Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday as an "old friend" during a rare trip abroad.