KHARKIV — At least 12 people have been killed and more than 40 injured after a Russian strike hit a large hardware store in Kharkiv, according to officials. Saturday’s attack came as Russian forces  opening a new front in the two-year-old conflict. As well as giving the latest death toll, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said the number of people injured from the strike has increased to at least 43. Officials have said there were nearly 200 people inside the building when the strike occurred.

There is “not a single military object” near the civilian hypermarket, Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said. “The air raid siren went off and some people managed to get out of the building, roughly 100 people. However there were still people inside the building,” Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said Saturday in an interview on national television.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike a “brutal attack,” in a post on X. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that “significant amounts of flammable materials” inside the hypermarket are making firefighting “complicated,” adding that there is also a possibility of the fire spreading further to nearby warehouses. “At the same time, there is a constant threat of repeated enemy shelling,” Klymenko said.

After Saturday’s attack, Zelensky reiterated that “if Ukraine had enough air defense systems and modern combat aircraft, such Russian strikes would have been impossible.” “That is why we are appealing to all leaders, to all states: we need a significant strengthening of air defense,” he said. Meanwhile, at least two people were killed and at least 10 injured as a result of a Ukrainian strike on a Russian village in the Belgorod region, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Saturday. As a result of the strike, a private residential building caught fire, and about 20 other buildings and 23 cars sustained damage. “All operational services are working on site,” Gladkov said. (CNN)…[+]