LIVE: Deadly Russian shelling targets Kherson, Kyiv calls for faster arms supplies

Issued on: 30/01/2023 – 08:17Modified: 30/01/2023 – 08:22

6:42am: NATO chief asks South Korea to ‘step up’ military support for Ukraine

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asked South Korea on Monday to “step up” military support for Ukraine, suggesting it reconsider its policy of not exporting weapons to countries in conflict.

In Seoul on the first leg of his Asia trip, Stoltenberg met top South Korean officials Sunday, and on Monday urged Seoul to do more to help Kyiv, saying there was an “urgent need for more ammunition”. He pointed to countries like Germany and Norway that had “long-standing policies not to export weapons to countries in conflict” which they revised after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February last year.

“If we believe in freedom, democracy, if we don’t want autocracy and tyranny to win then they need weapons,” he said, speaking at the Chey Institute in Seoul.

South Korea is an increasingly important arms exporter globally and has recently signed deals to sell hundreds of tanks to European countries, including NATO-member Poland. But South Korean law bans the export of weapons to countries in active conflict, which Seoul has said makes it difficult to provide arms directly to Kyiv, although it has provided non-lethal and humanitarian assistance.

4:28am: Russian shelling of southern city of Kherson leaves at least three dead

Russian shelling of Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson left at least three people dead on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Today, the Russian army has been shelling Kherson atrociously all day,” Zelensky said in his evening address. “Two women, nurses, were wounded in the hospital. As of now, there are reports of six wounded and three dead.”

The front in southern Ukraine has been considerably quieter recently than in the east, with Moscow withdrawing from Kherson city in November last year.  But the key city and regional capital is still subject to frequent shelling.

2:35am: Russian strikes eastern Kharkiv city destroying residential building

In eastern Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, the governor of the regional military administration said a Russian strike hit “a four-storey residential building”.

The victims included an elderly woman and the “building was partially destroyed,” said regional governor, Oleh Synehubov, on Telegram.

In the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, where fighting intensified in recent days after several months of a stagnant front, Moscow-appointed officials said Kyiv struck a railway bridge, killing four people.

Ukraine on Sunday carried out an “attack from a HIMARS multiple rocket launcher on a railway bridge across the Molochnaya river”, the Russian-installed head of the region, Yevgeny Balitsky, wrote on social media. “Four people from the railways brigade were killed, five were injured,” Balitsky added.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)