Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described Russia as the world's largest "terrorist organisation" after a Ukrainian children's hospital was reportedly bombed by its forces on Wednesday morning, local time.
In a post on X, the Ukrainian president accused Russia of conducting a "deliberate" attack against children and medical personnel based at the facility in the city of Kherson.
He said the hospital, which was housing about 100 people at the time of the strike, sustained heavy damage and both children and staff were injured, the youngest of which was eight years old.
"Russia is now the largest terrorist organisation in the world, which is not only dragging out its terrorist war but also trying to do everything possible to ensure that no opportunity to end the war succeeds," Mr Zelenskyy wrote.
Russia has been repeatedly accused of targeting civilian sites across Ukraine as part of its invasion, and has been launching near nightly drone and missile attacks across the country in a bid to weaken Ukrainian resolve.
[TWEET: Zelenskyy]Ukraine targets Moscow, Russian energy
In turn, Ukraine has continued its campaign to undermine Russia's war economy.
Russian authorities said Wednesday, local time, that Ukraine had targeted Russian energy infrastructure with drones, disrupting air traffic across the country and sending several drones towards Moscow for the third straight night.
Russian air defence units destroyed a total of 100 Ukrainian drones overnight, including six over the Moscow region, and the rest over 11 regions and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the Russian defence ministry said on Telegram.
A storage container containing fuel and lubricants in the city of Simferopol in Russian-annexed Crimea was hit by a Ukrainian drone and caught fire, the Moscow-installed governor said on Telegram.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsiya said three of Moscow's four airports, and several others around the country, were closed at some point in the night for safety reasons.
Strikes were recorded in the regions of Mari El, Ulyanovsk and Stavropol, as well as a chemical plant in the Budyonnovsk zone owned by Russia's Lukoil group.
Over the previous two nights, Russia's units destroyed 35 Ukrainian drones over the Moscow region, the Russian defence ministry said. There was no damage reported.
Russia tests new nuclear-capable 'super torpedo', Putin says
Vladimir Putin has used a visit to a Moscow hospital to announce that Russia has tested a new Poseidon nuclear-powered super autonomous torpedo, hailing the result as a "huge success".
It is the latest in a flurry of weapons tests carried out by Russia in recent days.
The country held a nuclear launch drill last week and Mr Putin announced on Sunday that Russia had successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield.
There are few confirmed details about the Poseidon in the public domain but it is essentially an autonomous nuclear-capable torpedo capable of triggering radioactive ocean swells to render coastal cities uninhabitable.
The Russian president, drinking tea with Russian soldiers wounded in the Ukraine war at a hospital in Moscow, said that the test had taken place on Tuesday.
"For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine, but also to launch the nuclear power unit on which this device passed a certain amount of time," Mr Putin said.
"There is nothing like this."
"This is a huge success," he said said, adding that the power of the Poseidon exceeded the Sarmat intercontinental missile, known as SS-X-29, or simply Satan II.
"The Poseidon's power significantly exceeds the power of even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental range missile," Mr Putin said.
Since first announcing the Poseidon and Burevestnik in 2018, Mr Putin has cast them as a response to moves by the United States to build a missile defence shield after Washington in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and to enlarge the NATO military alliance.
Vance and Putin envoy weigh in on peace talks
Mr Putin's latest announcement came as US Vice President JD Vance told US newspaper The New York Post that Donald Trump was unable to end the war in Ukraine.
But the vice-president added that the administration was working to have "productive relationships" with both Ukraine and Russia, saying he had "turned over a new leaf" with Mr Zelenskyy after their infamous Oval Office bust up earlier this year.
"We really do believe we've reached the point it's in both Russia and Ukraine's interest to stop fighting but, look the president can only open the door," Mr Vance told the Pod Force One podcast.
"He can't force either side to walk through it."
Those comments came on the same day Mr Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev told an investment conference in Saudi Arabia he predicted the war in Ukraine would be over within a year from now.
"We are sure that we are on the road to peace and as peacemakers we need to make it happen," Mr Dmitriev said.
His address to the Riyadh summit was held after his meetings with officials from the Trump administration last weekend.
His visit followed an announcement that a summit between Mr Trump and Mr Putin had been postponed.
Asked whether peace in Ukraine was possible within one year, Mr Dmitriev said: "I believe so."
"People are right now focused on the regional conflict that exists around Russia but we do not want it to escalate into a bigger conflict. And for that we have to do better than we have been doing, not worse," he said.
ABC/Reuters
