Russia-Ukraine war live: pleas for more air defence after Russia attacks cities

Alexandr Dolgopolov, the 35-year-old former Australian Open tennis quarter-finalist, is back in Kyiv awaiting a new deployment after serving on the frontline for several months defending his Ukrainian homeland.

He admits his family “were unhappy” at his joining up in 2022, a decision taken when he was watching TV images in Turkey where he had taken his sister and mother to safety after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, launched the invasion.

“It is my home so I think you have to do something,” Dolgopolov told AFP in a phone interview. “There were lots of reasons, a courageous people, the barbarity of the enemy and I think just fighting for the good side, defending what is yours.”

Dolgopolov said despite having no military experience, strange as it seems his time in professional tennis – “I had been playing since I was two” – served him well in certain respects. “Sport is like a small war without killing people.

“Mentality helps you because in your [sporting] career you have to go through many, many tough moments like injuries, extreme heat, the travel. It’s a tough job, top-level sports.

Dolgopolov reached 13th in the world and won three titles before a wrist injury ended his career in 2021.

“Here in war when you have tough moments you know how you can recover from them, like being tired. In other situations such as taking fast decisions like in tennis … [and] good habits like being on time and being organised.”

Dolgopolov came through his first tour of duty unscathed but others were not so lucky - a Georgian volunteer was killed. “For sure that was a tough one for us,” said Dolgopolov. “He was quite a young guy, a really talented engineer and really nice.”

Dolgopolov is sanguine about Ukraine’s chances of success against Russia, saying the lack of resources is having an impact and the west is not supplying enough military equipment.

“They [the Russians] passed a defence budget of 100 billion dollars a year for next three years.

“How can Ukraine win? Obviously we need much more equipment.”

Deadly strikes hit residential buildings in Ukraine and a Russian border region on Tuesday as an escalation of aerial attacks also wounded dozens and prompted Kyiv to urge speedier western weapons shipments.

In total, five people were killed and 130 wounded, authorities said. The bombardment of mainly Kyiv and Kharkiv came less than 24 hours after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, vowed to step up strikes following an unprecedented Ukrainian attack on the Russian city of Belgorod.

“The enemy has planned their trajectories to cause as much damage as possible. This is an utterly premeditated terror,” said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Since 29 December, Russia had launched nearly 300 missiles and more than 200 drones against Ukraine, he said.

Early on Wednesday, Ukrainian drones attacked the Russian city of Belgorod, the governor of the region said. Reports the previous day said a Ukrainian strike had killed at least one person and wounded up to seven.

Belgorod – which lies in Russia, north of Kharkiv in Ukraine – is a staging point for Russia’s invading forces, so has been repeatedly hit by Ukraine’s military as a legitimate target under the rules of war.

Good morning, this is day 679 of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war against Ukraine. Here are the important developments:

• Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the north-eastern city of Kharkiv killed at least five people on Tuesday and injured dozens of others, Ukrainian officials said. The attacks caused widespread damage and hit power supplies, Ukraine’s authorities said.

• Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said gas pipelines had been damaged in Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district, while electricity and water had been cut off in several districts of the capital. Heating and water supplies were damaged in Kharkiv, said its mayor, Ihor Terekhov.

• Russia said it had accidentally bombed a village in its own southern Voronezh region near Ukraine. In a statement quoted by Russian news agencies, the Russian army said “an abnormal discharge of aircraft ammunition occurred over the village of Petropavlovka in the Voronezh region. There are no casualties.”

• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, urged faster supplies of air defence systems, combat drones and long-range missiles. His ministry said Kuleba called on Ukraine’s western partners to respond to a new Russian strike on Ukraine by “accelerating the supply of additional air defence systems, combat drones of all types, long-range missiles with a range of 300+ km”.

• Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, and Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, also called for more air defence systems for Ukraine.

• Turkey said it would not allow two British minehunter ships to transit its waters en route to the Black Sea for use by Ukraine. Turkey is enforcing an international pact under which it can block passage of military ships of warring parties through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. It exempts naval ships if they are returning to their normal home bases in the Black Sea.

• One man was killed and seven people were injured on Tuesday in a Ukrainian attack on the city and region of Belgorod, near Russia’s border with Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry and regional officials claimed.