Russian missile attack kills several Ukrainians as Zelensky visits Sweden

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Sweden on Saturday, his first visit to the country since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, while at home a missile strike in the center of a northern city killed five people and wounded dozens.

The Swedish government said Zelensky will meet officials in Harpsund, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Stockholm. He will also meet Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia at a palace in the area.

Sweden abandoned its longstanding policy of military nonalignment to support Ukraine with weapons and other aid in the war against Russia. It also applied for NATO membership but is still waiting to join the alliance.

A Russian missile strike killed five people and wounded 37 others on Saturday in the city center of Chernihiv, the regional capital of the northern province of the same name, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Zelensky condemned the attack, which he said hit buildings including a theater and a university.

"This is what a neighborhood with a terrorist state is, this is what we unite the whole world against. A Russian missile hit right in the center of the city, in our Chernihiv," the Ukrainian president wrote on Telegram. "A square, the polytechnic university, a theater. An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss."

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin visited top military officials in the city of Rostov-on-Don near the Ukrainian border.

The Kremlin said that Putin listened to reports from Valery Gerasimov, the commander in charge of Moscow's operations in Ukraine, and other top military brass at the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District.

The exact timings of his visit were not confirmed, but...