Ukrainian president brands Russian attack on Kharkiv city centre a war crime

Closed-circuit television footage showed a fireball engulfing the street in front of the building, with a few cars continuing to roll out of the billowing smoke

A burnt car is seen in front of a damaged City Hall building, in Kharkiv. Picture: (Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP

President Volodymyr Zelensky has described a Russian military strike on the centre of Ukraine’s second-largest city as a war crime.

Not long after sunrise, a Russian military strike hit the centre of Kharkiv, badly damaging the symbolic Soviet-era regional administration building.