Russia-Ukraine updates: Putin says war was ‘unleashed’ on Russia

The Russian president delivered his annual Victory Day speech.

More than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the countries are fighting for control of areas in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's forces are readying a spring counteroffensive, but Putin appears to be preparing for a long and bloody war.

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1 dead, 33 injured in Zaporizhzhia missile strike

One person is dead and 33 others were injured after a missile strike hit the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, according to the head of Zaporizhzhia's regional military administration Yurii Malashko.

Among the victims are two children, who are 7 and 9 years old. Eleven adults were hospitalized, with four in serious condition, according to the secretary of the city council, Anatoly Kurtev.

-ABC News' Will Gretsky


Zelenskyy visits troops after night of Russian strikes

Chinese President Xi Jinping hadn't even left Moscow when the drones started exploding. It came a matter of hours after Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed they were the ones who wanted to make "peace" in Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials say 21 lethal attack drones were launched overnight and into this morning by Russia, with 16 shot down by the Ukrainians.

An apartment block was hit in a town southeast of Kyiv, killing at least four people and injuring others, officials said. Russian officials claim Ukrainian soldiers were based there. The Ukrainians are calling it a "civilian" building.

Russian missiles later hit an apartment block in the heart of the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.

And in an apparent repost to the geopolitical theatrics in Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited his troops on Wednesday in the eastern Donbas, not far from the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to his officials.

Bakhmut has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance and sacrifice and despite being surrounded on three sides Ukrainian forces inside the city are, after months of fighting there, still holding on.

Zelenskyy's office released video of him addressing troops and also visiting injured soldiers in a military medical facility in the region. He told troops their "destiny was difficult but important" because they were fighting to save the motherland.

-ABC News' Tom Soufi-Burridge and Yulia Drozd


Missile strikes residential building in Ukraine

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Wednesday, injuring at least 18 people, officials said.

"This must not become 'just another day' in" Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Twitter.

"The world needs greater unity and determination to defeat Russian terror faster and protect lives," he said.

The victims included two children, secretary of the City Council Anatoly Kurtev said. Eleven adults were hospitalized, with four in serious condition, he said.

-ABC News' Joe Simonetti


Explosions reported in several Ukrainian cities

Explosions were heard and felt in the cities of Odesa and Kherson and the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk on Tuesday evening, officials and people on the ground in Ukraine reported on social media channels.

During the attack on Odesa, Ukraine's air defense shot down two X-59 guided missiles launched by Russian fighter jets, the Ukrainian Air Force said on its Telegram channel.

Russia fired four missiles at Odesa, Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office, said on his Telegram channel. Two rockets were shot down by Ukrainian air defense, and two rockets hit the city, he said.

Three people were wounded, and a three-story building on the complex of a monastery was damaged, Yermak said.

Three people were killed, and four were wounded as a result of Russian shelling in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General reported on Facebook.

-ABC News' Ellie Kaufman


How the Russia-Ukraine conflict became a cultural war

In the basement of the Syayvo bookstore in Ukraine's capital, hundreds of Russian language books stand piled, waiting to be pulped.

The books -- ranging from everything between the classics of Russian literature to works translated into Russian and Soviet-era textbooks -- have been donated by Ukrainians who have turned away from Russian culture to embrace their own since the invasion last year.

They are set to be recycled and turned into Ukrainian language texts or other products, with all profits going to support the war effort, Nadia Kibenko, the 32-year-old store worker who is handling the books, told ABC News. They have recycled 75 tons -- around 150,000 volumes -- since last July, she said. As a child, Kibenko grew up in a Ukrainian speaking household but, more often than not, only had the choice to read in Russian.

"We do not burn books," Kibenko told ABC News during a recent interview in Kyiv. "We just give them second life."

The cultural battleground is not just symbolic. Witnesses from the Russian occupied territories say that, in schools, Ukrainian language books were thrown out and replaced by Russian ones as new curricula taught Putin's view that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people."

A report published in December by PEN America, a New York-based literary and human rights organization, said that "culture was on the frontlines" and Putin "seeks not only to control Ukrainian territory, but to erase Ukrainian culture and identity."

-ABC News' Guy Davies