Russian missile attack kills several Ukrainians as Zelensky visits Sweden

MOSCOW

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Sweden on Saturday, his first visit to the country since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, while at home a missile strike in the center of a northern city killed five people and wounded dozens.

The Swedish government said Zelensky will meet officials in Harpsund, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Stockholm. He will also meet Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia at a palace in the area.

Sweden abandoned its longstanding policy of military nonalignment to support Ukraine with weapons and other aid in the war against Russia. It also applied for NATO membership but is still waiting to join the alliance.

A Russian missile strike killed five people and wounded 37 others on Saturday in the city center of Chernihiv, the regional capital of the northern province of the same name, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Zelensky condemned the attack, which he said hit buildings including a theater and a university.

“This is what a neighborhood with a terrorist state is, this is what we unite the whole world against. A Russian missile hit right in the center of the city, in our Chernihiv,” the Ukrainian president wrote on Telegram. “A square, the polytechnic university, a theater. An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss.”

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin visited top military officials in the city of Rostov-on-Don near the Ukrainian border.

The Kremlin said that Putin listened to reports from Valery Gerasimov, the commander in charge of Moscow’s operations in Ukraine, and other top military brass at the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District.

The exact timings of his visit were not confirmed, but state media published video footage that appeared to be filmed at night, showing Gerasimov greeting Putin and leading him into a building. The meeting itself was held behind closed doors.

Putin’s visit was the first since the Wagner mercenary group ’s attempted mutiny in June, which saw the group’s fighters briefly take control of Rostov-on-Don.

During June’s short-lived revolt, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin repeatedly denounced Gerasimov, who serves as chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for denying supplies to his fighters in Ukraine.

Prigozhin claimed that the uprising was not aimed at Putin but at removing Gerasimov and other top brass who he claimed were mismanaging the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine this week has claimed counteroffensive gains on the southeastern front, regaining control of the village of Urozhaine in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Wednesday.

The leader of the Russian battalion fighting to maintain control of Urozhaine called for “freezing the front” on Thursday, claiming his troops “cannot win” against Ukraine.

“Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no,” Alexander Khodakovsky said in a video posted to Telegram.

Overnight into Saturday, Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 15 out of 17 Russian drones targeting Ukraine’s northern, central and western regions.

The deputy governor of the western Khmelnytskyi region, Serhii Tiurin, said two people were wounded and dozens of buildings damaged by an attack.

In the northwestern Zhytomyr region, a Russian drone attack targeted an infrastructure facility and caused a fire, but no casualties were reported, said Gov. Vitalii Bunechko.