RUSSIAN drone and missile attacks killed at least 10 Ukrainians today, mainly in the capital Kiev.

The Russian bombardment appeared to target residential areas, with emergency services seeking survivors from the rubble of a block of flats that was partly destroyed. Ukraine’s air force said the overnight assault involved 352 drones, 11 ballistic missiles and five cruise missiles.

It accompanied a Russian summer offensive along the 620-mile front line. Over the weekend the Russian Defence Ministry reported capturing the small settlements of Perebudova in Donetsk and Petriv’ske (for which it used the Russian name Petrovskoya) in the Kharkiv region, where Russian troops have pressed across the border after driving Ukrainian forces out of Kursk.

It referred to the capture of both villages as “liberations,” though currently Russia has made no formal claim to territory in the Kharkiv region as it has to the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which it has officially annexed.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told an audience of business leaders in St Petersburg that he considered Russians and Ukrainians one people and “in that sense, all Ukraine is ours,” adding what he called an “old rule,” that “where a Russian soldier sets foot, that is ours.” 

However, today, the Kremlin said Russia’s war aims and territorial claims hadn’t changed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said today that Russia was using both North Korean and Iranian missiles and drones in its bombardments, calling the three countries a “coalition of murderers.” He has publicly backed the US and Israeli attacks on Iran.