The death toll rose to 16 on Sunday after Russian forces attacked a hardware store in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, authorities said, and rescuers continued to search for bodies in the burnt wreckage.Among the dead was a 12-year-old girl, 43 more were injured and several are still missing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a desperate video plea calling on world leaders to attend a “peace summit” in Switzerland. Zelenskyy specifically appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend the summit, scheduled to begin on June 15. “Please show leadership in promoting peace — not just a pause between attacks, but real peace,” Zelenskyy said in English. Biden has not yet confirmed his attendance, and it is unclear whether China will attend. “We are negotiating Beijing's participation,” Mykhailo Podoljak, an aide to Zelenskyy, said in an interview last week.
Zelenskyy will meet with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Madrid on Monday and is also due to meet with King Felipe VI. President Zelensky postponed all upcoming foreign visits, including a trip to Spain scheduled for May 17, following Russia's offensive in the northern Kharkiv region earlier this month.
Ukrainian prosecutors said three people were killed by Russian shelling on Sunday in three towns in the Donetsk region, another focus of the Russian military onslaught.Although Russia does not control the entire territory, the prosecutor in the annexed Donetsk region said civilians were killed in Siversk in the north of the region, and in Krasnohorivka and Chasiv Yar further south.
Russian forces also captured the village of Berestve in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine.The TASS news agency cited the Russian Defense Ministry as saying this, but the report could not be verified.
A Ukrainian drone attack in Russia's Oryol region early Monday killed one person and wounded three, the region's governor, Andrey Kryuchkov, said on the messaging app Telegram.Krychkov said the drone crashed into a gas station, damaging it, and then a second drone fell on the station, killing one firefighter.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reiterated his opposition to weapons supplied to Ukraine being used on Russian territory after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Economist magazine that the restrictions should be lifted.“I don't know why Stoltenberg made such a statement. I think we have to be very careful,” Meloni told Italian television, adding: “I agree that NATO must remain firm and not give any signals of compromise.”