Russian missile strike on training ground in Sumy kills six soldiers

At least six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in a Russian missile strike in the north-eastern region of Sumy, officials have said.

Ten others were injured in the strike on a military shooting range, a Facebook statement from Ukraine’s National Guard said.

According to the statement, the unit commander has been suspended while an official inquiry is being conducted into the incident which happened on Tuesday.

“An internal investigation into the incident is underway. The commander of the military unit has been suspended, and the necessary information has been passed on to law enforcement agencies,” Ukraine’s national guard said in a statement.

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed that up to 70 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed in the strike on the training camp near the city of Shostka.

Also on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin visited Russia’s Kursk region for the first time since Moscow claimed that it had driven Ukrainian forces out of the area last month, the Kremlin said.

Ukrainian forces made a surprise incursion into Kursk in August last year in one of their biggest battlefield successes in the more than three-year war.

The incursion was the first time Russian territory had been occupied by an invader since World War II and dealt a humiliating blow to Moscow.

Putin’s visit appeared to be an effort to show Russia is in control of the conflict — even though its full-scale invasion of its neighbour has been slow and costly in terms of casualties and equipment — amid recent US and European proposals for a ceasefire that Putin has effectively rejected.

“What you are doing now during this difficult situation for this region, for this area, and for the country, will remain with you for the rest of your life as, perhaps, the most meaningful thing with which you were ever involved,” Putin told volunteers working at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant-2.

Ukraine’s surprise thrust into Kursk and its ability to hold land there was a logistical feat, carried out in secrecy, that countered months of gloomy news from the front about Ukrainian forces being pushed backward by the bigger Russian army.

Kyiv’s strategy aimed to show that Russia has weaknesses and that the war isn’t lost. It also sought to distract Russian forces from their onslaught in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine and drawing Moscow soldiers away from Sumy and the Kharkiv front.

North Korea sent up to 12,000 troops to help the Russian army take back control of Kursk, according to Ukraine, the US and South Korea.

Russia announced on 26 April that its forces had pushed out the Ukrainian army but Kyiv officials denied the claim.