TOP HEADLINES

• Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused Russia of "genocidal aggression" after the attack, saying it was as "a demonstrably brutal Russian crime – a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store," later claiming that it was "no blind strike." The White House condemned the attack as "horrifying."

• Fresh Russia air strikes killed a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and damaged grain and port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region on Friday. The boy was killed when Moscow hit Ukraine's second biggest city with two Iskander ballistic missiles, injuring more than twenty people.

• The attacks follow a Russian missile strike that killed at least 52 people one day earlier during a gathering to mourn a fallen soldier in a village in Kharkiv region. Three days of mourning have been announced to mark the region's deadliest attack of the conflict and one of the biggest civilian death tolls in any single Russian strike.

• Russia has indicated it was moving swiftly towards revoking its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - which bans nuclear explosions  by everyone, everywhere - after President Vladimir Putin held out the possibility of resuming nuclear testing.

• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has called for more Su-34 fighter jets to be produced, as the Kremlin announced a massive spending hike to accommodate its military needs in Ukraine. Moscow has increased defense spending by 68 percent for 2024, totalling around six percent of GDP.

• President Putin has described the Canadian parliament's standing ovations to honor a Ukrainian war veteran who served in Nazi Waffen SS units as "disgusting", claiming it showed Moscow was right to "denazify" Ukraine.

• The Russian leader also suggested that the plane crash which killed Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in August was caused by hand grenades detonating inside the aircraft, not by a missile attack. "Fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies," Putin said. "There was no external impact on the plane - this is already an established fact."

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attending a summit of the European Political Community in Spain, warned European leaders that Russia could rebuild its military capabilities and attack other countries within five years if the continent were to waver in its support for Kyiv.

IN DETAIL

Aerial strikes wreak havoc

Russia unleashed new air strikes on Ukraine early on Friday, killing a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and damaging grain and port infrastructure in the Odesa region in the south, Ukrainian officials said.

The child and his grandmother were killed when Russia hit Ukraine's second biggest city with two Iskander ballistic missiles, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said. More than twenty other people were wounded, including an 11-month-old baby, he added. The boy's father, Oleh Bychko, said he had managed to pull his younger son and wife out of the rubble after the strike, but not his 10-year-old son. 

Russian drone strikes also targeted Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south, Dnipropetrovsk region in the southeast, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions in the center and also Kharkiv region in the northeast, Ukraine's air force said. One drone attack damaged a grain silo in the Odesa region, with nine trucks catching fire, but 25 of 33 drones launched were shot down.

The attacks followed a Russian missile strike on Thursday in which Ukrainian officials said at least 52 people were killed in a village in northeastern Ukraine during a gathering to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier. The attack on Hroza was one of the deadliest single strikes on civilians since the conflict's start. Three days of mourning was announced in the Kharkiv region.

The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights has since deployed a field team to investigate the airstrike, which the OCHR said had likely been fired by Russia, but that it was too early to say for certain. "The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who saw for himself the horrific impact of such strikes, is profoundly shocked and condemns these killings," OHCHR spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell  said.

Moscow in turn announced on Friday that it had destroyed eight Ukrainian drones in western Russia in Belgorod and Kursk. Since Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in June, Russia has weathered waves of drone attacks that have sporadically damaged buildings, including in Moscow. However, Russian officials have downplayed their significance.

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