At least four people were killed and five wounded by a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv, local officials said.

Photographs from the scene showed smoke billowing from a four-storey building with its upper floor partly destroyed by the attack on Wednesday morning. Moscow admitted to the strike on the city but said its forces had hit what it called a training base for “foreign mercenaries” in the region.

The frequency of shelling on the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk is “enormous”, the regional governor of Luhansk said on Wednesday. Lysychansk “is constantly being shelled with large calibres. The fighting is continuing at the outskirts of the city. The Russian army is trying to attack constantly”, - Serhiy Haidai said.

President of Ukraine announced the end of diplomatic ties with Syria after the Russia-ally recognized the independence of eastern Ukraine’s two separatist republics, Donetsk and Luhansk. “There will no longer be relations between Ukraine and Syria”, - Volodymyr Zelensky said, adding that the sanctions pressure against Syria “will be even greater”.