Ukraine war live: Air raid sirens sound Kyiv as four killed in playground attack

This weekend 25,000 music lovers are gathering for Ukraine’s biggest music festival, an annual event that hasn’t been held since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Journalist Paul Niland shared a video on X of a large crowd watching the Ukrainian rock band BoomBox on stage. The billing this year will understandably mostly be made up of domestic talent, though the event has previously had headline acts from global stars like Kasabian, The Chemical Brothers and Liam Gallagher.

Speaking to the BBC, event organiser Vlad Yaremchuk explained how the festival is being conducted in a car park outside one of Kyiv’s biggest shopping malls – so if a Russian air attack does take place, “there will be more than enough space to get everyone evacuated quickly — and we’re talking minutes”. The mall has a capacity of 100,000, he says.

So far the festival, running from Friday to Sunday, is going smoothly. It already had to be pushed back one week after the major aerial assault on Kyiv that hit a children’s hospital.

“We didn’t even expect to have a chance to do a festival while the war is still happening.” Yaremchuk says.

“The reality showed us that cultural events are still possible in wartime.”

Residents outraged over frequent power cuts in southern Russia staged a rare public protest on Saturday as officials blamed blackouts on a heatwave.

Police arrested at least two people in the city of Krasnodar as protesters demanded relief from mass power outages in several regions.

The south of Russia has been affected by unusually hot weather and led to the shutdown of one of four power units at the Rostov nuclear power plant, the region’s largest, earlier this week.

The unit has been put back into operation since then.

“There has been abnormal heat in the Krasnodar region for a week now. The load on the energy system is colossal. I know and understand all the indignation of residents due to power outages,”

Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Krasnodar region, said on the Telegram messaging app. He said power capacities were not currently sufficient to meet peak demand during the hot summer months.

It marked one of the rare incidents of protest in Russia where authorities have clamped down on any form of demonstration, especially politically-laced dissent, since the start of the conflict with Ukraine in February 2022, and public assemblies are very rare given the risk of arrest.

Ukrainian officials also confirmed that the death toll following a Russian strike on Friday on the city of Mykolaiv, had risen to four.

A child was among the victims, said the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Writing about the Mykolaiv strike on social media, Mr Zelensky said that a projectile had hit a playground next to an apartment block.

“Russia proves every day with its terror that ‘pressure’ is not enough,” he said.

“This destruction of life must be stopped. We need new solutions to support our defences. Russia must feel the power of the world.”

Ukraine‘s air force said Russia had launched four missiles and 17 drones overnight, of which 13 drones had been shot down.

The attacks have left thousands of people without power or running water in the Poltava region of central Ukraine, governor Filip Pronin said.

Ukraine’s air defence systems were engaged in repelling a Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Sunday morning, Ukraine’s military said.

“Air defence systems are being activated on the approaches to Kyiv,” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on Telegram.

Residents in the capital were ordered to stay in shelters until the air raid alarms were lifted.

Thousands of homes in central Ukraine were without power or running water after Russian strikes in the Poltava region amid Russia’s continuous attacks on Ukraine‘s energy infrastructure.

Meanwhile, a pulverising Russian onslaught in recent months has forced Kyiv’s troops to withdraw from some towns and villages in the eastern Donetsk region.

The latest targets are the mining town of Toretsk and the city of Pokrovsk, where Russia is stepping up its assaults.

Ukrainian forces repelled 20 and 27 attacks on those areas respectively over 24 hours, Ukraine‘s General Staff said Friday. That was almost double the number of assaults recorded at other hot spots along the frontline, it said.

The Ukrainian president on Friday became the first foreign leader to address the cabinet in person since Bill Clinton in 1997, calling for support for his country’s “long-range capability”.

In his address to the cabinet, Mr Zelensky said that “if the restriction on Western weapons is lifted” it would help Kyiv to strengthen its defences and secure its frontline positions.

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Three pro-Russian hackers have been arrested for alleged cyberattacks against Spain and other NATO countries for terrorist purposes, Spanish police said on Saturday.

The suspects were detained for their alleged participation in distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attacks against public institutions and strategic sectors, the Civil Guard said.

It did not say if the three suspects, who have not been named, have been charged or detained

The cyberattacks were allegedly carried out against web pages of public and private organizations in the government sectors, critical infrastructures and essential services in countries which support Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, it said.

Police released a video on social media platform X of a raid at the home of one of the suspects in which a Soviet-era hammer and sickle flag was mounted on a wall.

The PM is keen to maintain Britain’s position as one of the world’s most vocal supporters of Ukraine – a role that will become even more important as backing from other powers begins to waver, writes Mary Dejevsky

A Ukrainian former MP best known for her crusade to promote the Ukrainian language has died after being shot in the street by an unknown assailant.

Iryna Farion, 60, initially survived the assault in the western city of Lviv on Friday, but later died from her wounds in a hospital. A manhunt is currently underway for her attacker, who fled from the scene. Ukrainian officials said an investigation is being carried out and that the attack is being treated as an assassination.

“All available surveillance cameras are being worked on, witness interviews are ongoing and several districts are being surveyed. All leads are being investigated, including the one that leads to Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram channel Saturday.

“All necessary forces from the National Police of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Security Service have been deployed to search for the criminal.”

Farion served as a member of the Ukrainian parliament between 2012 and 2014, and was best known for her campaigns to promote the use of the Ukrainian language by Ukrainian officials who spoke Russian. She controversially criticised Russian-speaking members of Ukraine’s Azov regiment who defended the port city of Mariupol in the first days of the full-scale invasion.

Police are considering “personal animosity” toward the former MP due to her social and political activities as a likely motive behind the attack, said Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, who will oversee the investigation in Lviv.