Ukraine war briefing: Russia strikes Kharkiv as Biden lets

Russian missile hits apartment block in Kharkiv, officials say, as Biden administration allows Ukraine to target forces inside part of Russia. What we know on day 828

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US-made weapons can be used over part of Ukraine’s border with Russia to counter Moscow’s offensive aimed at the city of Kharkiv, Joe Biden has decided, relaxing an important constraint on Ukraine’s able to defend itself. “The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use US-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them,” a US official said. The change will also allow the Ukrainian army to target Russian forces massing across the border in the Belgorod region but restrictions remain on the use of US long-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

At least three people have been killed and 16 injured after Russian missiles hit three sites in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, local officials said early on Friday. Accounts of the attack said the missiles hit a five-storey apartment block, a shop in a three-storey building and a sewing factory, Reuters reported. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said the attacks on the city’s Novobazarskyi district, used the “double tap” technique; delivering a second strike soon after an initial attack on a given site. He said that, according to preliminary information, S-300 missiles were used. Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov told public broadcaster Suspilne about the damage to the apartment building. “The third, fourth and fifth floors are destroyed, stairwells were destroyed, facades were destroyed,” he said. Syniehubov said at least two children were among those injured in the attack, which occurred at about midnight local time.

China’s support for Russia “not only threatens Ukrainian security, it threatens European security”, US state department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel has said, a day after Washington accused Beijing’s leadership of supporting Russia’s war and threatened further western sanctions. US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer met China’s vice-foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu in Washington on Thursday. Patel declined to provide details of any future sanctions but added: “If China does not curtail its support for Russia’s defence industrial base, the US will be prepared to take further steps.” The Biden administration issued an executive order in December that threatened sanctions on financial institutions helping Russia skirt western sanctions. Campbell said Chinese support, “with the backing of its leadership,” was helping Moscow reconstitute elements of its military, including long-range missile, artillery and drone capabilities, and its ability to track battlefield movements.

Russian authorities are increasingly targeting children and their families as punishment for opposing the Kremlin and its invasion of Ukraine, Amnesty International said on Friday. Since the invasion, Russian authorities have been using children to put pressure on parents, threatening to remove parental rights or place children in institutions, the rights group said in a report. Some parents had to flee Russia with their children to avoid being separated from them. “Despite all the Kremlin’s talk about the value of the family, it is the very bond between children and their parents that is being shamelessly exploited to crush dissent,” said Oleg Kozlovsky, Amnesty’s Russia researcher. “In this politically motivated assault on children, schools and teachers have become tools of persecution and arbitrary interference by the state,” he said, adding that schools were indoctrinating children with “false government-mandated narratives”.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse