Russian missiles hit targets across Ukraine

KYIV/SCHLOSS ELMAU, Germany: Dozens of Russian missiles have struck targets across Ukraine, with the capital Kyiv enduring the heaviest barrage in months.

A Kyiv apartment block was destroyed, killing at least one and wounding six others including a seven-year-old girl. Ukraine says 14 missiles were fired at the Kyiv region on Sunday, but the strikes extended far beyond the city, reported foreign media.

Other areas included the central city of Cherkasy, where one person died, and the north-eastern Kharkiv region. The strikes came as leaders of the G7 group of the world's richest nations began a three-day summit in Bavaria, southern Germany, with the war in Ukraine top of the agenda. They are expected to promise further military support for Kyiv and impose more sanctions on Moscow.

In Kyiv, a large blast crater was gouged in a nursery school playground, near a nine-storey building whose top floors were ripped apart. The injured girl's mother - a Russian citizen - was also pulled from the rubble and taken to hospital, officials said. They said the girl later underwent a surgery and was "in stable condition".

Ukraine's military says some missiles were launched from Tupolev bombers over the Caspian Sea, some 1,450km away. And on Saturday, it said, Russian missiles were fired from Tupolevs flying over neighbouring Belarus.

The Russian defence ministry said high-precision weapons struck Ukrainian army training centres on Sunday in the regions of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, and Zhytomyr and Lviv west of the capital.

The strike on Starychi district in Lviv was just 30km from the border with Natomember Poland. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said the attacks were an attempt to intimidate Ukraine ahead of this week's G7 summit. The last major Russian missile strike on Kyiv was on 5 June when a railway repair facility was hit. Russia has become internationally isolated through far-reaching sanctions since its 24 February invasion of Ukraine. Military analysts say it is now a war of attrition in the industrial eastern Donbas region, though Kyiv's forces are outgunned by Russian artillery and missiles. Ukraine has urged the West again to speed up deliveries of heavy long-range weapons. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said at the summit of the Group of Seven rich democracies in Germany on Sunday said strikes by Russian missiles in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv overnight and early this morning were another case of Russian barbarism,. "It's more of their barbarism," he said.