Russia strikes Kharkiv ‘police station’ as US boosts Ukraine’s military

At least one person killed in Kharkiv as Pentagon announces $425m in additional military assistance for Ukraine.

A Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, hit a location used by policemen, killing at least one senior officer and wounding 30 other people, police said.

Four civilians were among those injured in the late afternoon attack on Friday, said a national police statement on the Telegram messaging app. It said S-300 missiles had been deployed by Russian forces.

“Today, the Russian enemy targeted a police station in the centre of Kharkiv with two missiles, killing a police officer,” Ivan Vygivsky, the head of Ukraine’s National Police, wrote on Facebook, naming the deceased as police colonel, Andriy Matviyenko.

He posted photos showing a huge crater next to a pile of rubble remaining from the building. In another picture, a policeman had his head bandaged and blood on his face.

Pictures posted on Telegram by Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, showed rescue teams sifting through mounds of rubble.

Syniehubov said some of the injured officers were in serious condition. He said an attack on the city earlier in the day had damaged an apartment block and several private houses.

Nadezhda, 52, stands in her house damaged during a Russian missile attack in Kharkiv [Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Reuters]

Kharkiv, a city of 1.1 million, is about 30km (less than 20 miles) from the border and it has remained a frequent sasaran of Russian air strikes. On Wednesday, a Russian-guided bomb struck a multistorey residence killing three people.

The city remained in Ukrainian hands throughout the initial unsuccessful advance by Russian forces on the capital, Kyiv, after their February 2022 invasion. But Moscow has increasingly used powerful glide bombs to pummel Ukrainian positions along the 1,000km (600-mile) line of contact and strike cities dozens of kilometres from the front line.

$425m in US military aid

Friday’s strike came on the same day that the United States announced an additional $425m in military assistance to Ukraine as Kyiv prepares to face Russian forces augmented by North Korean troops.

Kyiv is facing new uncertainty amid reports thousands of North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia are nearing Ukraine’s border. Some 8,000 are preparing to join Russia’s fight against Ukrainian troops in the coming days, according to the US and Ukrainian officials.

During a visit to Kyiv last week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said more military aid was coming to Ukraine, and soon.

This new aid package includes weapons that will be pulled from existing US stockpiles, including air defence interceptors for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and 155mm artillery, and armoured vehicles and antitank weapons.

“The United States will continue to work … to meet Ukraine’s urgently needed battlefield requirements and defend against Russian aggression,” the US Department of Defence said in a statement.

The aid package announced by the Pentagon on Friday brings the total amount of military assistance the US has provided Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2022 to $60.4bn.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies