Russia’s offensive in the frontline region of Kharkiv is escalating, Volodymyr Zelensky said, with more villages engulfed in active fighting.

“Defensive operations and fierce battles are taking place in the Kharkiv region along a significant border strip. Some villages have effectively turned from a grey zone to a war zone. Occupiers are attempting to seize control of some of them while using others to advance,” he said in his nightly address.

He added: “Our goal is clear: inflict as many losses as possible on the occupiers. The situation is also very difficult near Vovchansk. The city is under constant Russian fire. Our military continues to counter Russian attacks. Locals continue to receive assistance.”

Mr Zelensky has urged everyone in the Kharkiv region to stand firm. “Both those in the military, defence forces, local governments, and communities. Our resilience and Ukrainian results in combat are key,” he said in his nightly address.

This comes as Russian forces attacking the Kharkiv region reached the outskirts of the border town of Vovchansk.

Vladimir Putin’s troops smashed into the Kharkiv region on Friday, opening up a northeastern front in the 27-month war that has long been waged in the south and east. Kharkiv, Ukraine‘s second largest city, is 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border.

Putin’s press secretary Dmitriy Peskov said the president decided the ministry of defence should be headed by a civilian to be “open to innovation and advanced ideas”.

He said: “The one who is more open to innovations is the one who will be victorious on the battlefield.”

Mr Peskov also claimed the change made sense because Russia was “approaching a situation like the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, when the military and law enforcement authorities accounted for 7.4% of state spending”.

At least 15 people were killed and 20 injured on Sunday when a section of a Russian apartment block collapsed after being struck by fragments of a Soviet-era missile, launched by Ukraine and shot down by Russia, Russian officials said.

Russia’s defence ministry said the attack took place at 8.40am GMT and involved at least 12 missiles.

The attack is one of the deadliest to date on the region of Belgorod, involving Tochka ballistic missiles and Adler and RM-70 Vampire (MLRS) multiple launch rocket systems.

“Fragments of one of the downed Tochka-U missiles damaged an apartment building in the city of Belgorod,” the Russian ministry said.

Visuals from the scene showed at least 10 storeys of the building collapsing. Later, as emergency services scoured the rubble for survivors, the roof collapsed and people ran for their lives, dust and rubble falling behind them.

Russia’s emergency ministry updated the death toll from 13 to 15 in the early hours today. Local reports said at least 20 people were injured and at least once child was among the missing. Rocket sirens went off as emergency workers searched the rubble.

Both Ukraine and Russia say they do not target civilians in the war, which Russia launched at its smaller neighbour in February 2022. Its invasion has killed thousands, displaced millions and turned Ukrainian cities into rubble.

A fire was reported at a Russian electrical substation in Lipetsk region after the facility came under Ukrainian drone attack this morning, while attacks were also reported in the bordering Belgorod and Kursk regions, officials said.

“There are no casualties. The fire in the territory of the electrical substation is being extinguished,” Igor Artamonov, the governor of the Kursk region in Russia’s south, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia said it destroyed at least eight drones over the Kursk region that borders Ukraine, the region’s administration. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties or serious damage.

Several “air objects” were also downed over the Belgorod region, south of Kursk, also along the border with Ukraine, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

The attack damaged five houses, he added, but according to preliminary information there were no injuries.

Ukraine does not typically comment on these reports of drone attacks but says that targeting Russia’s military, transport and energy infrastructure undermines Moscow’s war effort and is an answer to the countless deadly attacks by Russia.

Vladimir Putin yesterday proposed to replace his long-term ally Sergei Shoigu as defence minister and nominated civilian Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister who specialises in economics, for the job more than two years into the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said.

Seen as a member of Mr Putin’s close circle, the 65-year-old graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow State University in 1981 with distinction. He wrote his dissertation on “An imitative approach to modeling interrelated processes for the formation and use of working capital.”

In 2000, Mr Belousov was appointed a non-staff adviser to the Russian prime minister and joined the economy ministry as deputy minister six years later. From 2008-2012, he was director of the department for economics and finance in the government apparatus, the same years Putin served as prime minister.

In 2012, he served as Russia’s economics minister. From 2013 until 2020, Mr Belousov served as adviser to the Russian president.

From 2020, he worked as first deputy prime minister. When prime minister Mikhail Mishustin got Covid-19 in 2020, Mr Belousov briefly took on the prime minister’s duties while Mishustin got better.

In 2017, Russian media outlet RBC said Belousov was one of the officials who convinced Putin that the digital economy and blockchain were crucial to the future.

“I can say that what a country with sovereignty should definitely have is the possession of its own meanings. Who are we, where are we from, where are we going? We have no other option for our country but to acquire or reproduce this identity,” he had told RBC in an interview in 2023.

According to RBC, he practised sambo and karate in his youth and did not serve in the armed forces.

The head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration (RMA), Oleh Sinegubov, said on Telegram:

“The enemy is intensifying shelling of Vovchansk. Our Armed Forces soldiers are fighting hard. The northern border of the Kharkiv region is the most difficult area now.”

Russian troops are intensifying shelling of the city of Vovchansk in Kharkiv region, and the evacuation of the population continues.

“Today we have evacuated 1,600 people from the Vovchansk direction. We are continuing this work. In just three days, 5,500 people have been evacuated,” he added.