Vladimir Putin has warned that
Russian forces will shoot down any F-16 fighters the West supplies to
Ukraine but denied
Moscow has any plans to attack
NATO. The Russian president said western aircraft would not change the situation in Ukraine and insisted his country would not attack Poland, the Baltic states or the Czech Republic. “We have no aggressive intentions towards these states,” Mr Putin said, in a
Kremlin transcript released on Thursday. Volodymyr Tymoshko, head of the Kharkiv regional
police, said Moscow may have used a new type of guided
bomb, which he described as the UMPB D-30, in air strikes on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Local officials said four children including a three-month-old baby were among 19 people wounded in the attack on Wednesday that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned as “Russian terror”. Meanwhile, Kyiv’s prosecutor general Andriy Kostin told Interfax- Ukraine that more than 5,500 Ukrainians have reportedly been tortured by Vladimir Putin’s troops, while he claimed over 10,000 peaceful civilians were being held in occupied territories. The Kremlin has strongly denied any allegations of torture or maltreatment.