By Aleksandar Vasovic and Branko Filipovic PODGORICA (Reuters) -Polls opened in Montenegro on Sunday for a snap election many hope

A Russian missile attack has killed 51 people at a memorial service, including a six-year-old boy, in what Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has called “no blind strike”. The Russian missile slammed into a cafe and shop in a village in northeastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing 51 people in Hroza village in the eastern Kharkiv region. The attack – thought to have been carried out using an Iskander ballistic missile – appears to have caused one of the biggest civilian death tolls in any single Russian strike. Mr Zelensky, who was attending a summit with European leaders, said: “Russian troops could not have been unaware of where they were hitting. This was no blind strike.” "The terrorists deliberately carried out the attack during lunchtime, to ensure a maximum number of casualties," said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov. "There were no military targets there. This is a heinous crime intended to scare Ukrainians." Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday evening called the Canadian parliament's standing ovations to honour a Ukrainian war veteran who served in Nazi Waffen SS units "disgusting", and said it showed Moscow was right to "denazify" Ukraine. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month formally apologised after the speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, Anthony Rota, praised 98-year-old ex-soldier Yaroslav Hunka in the chamber while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was present. Rota said he had made a mistake and resigned. "He essentially lumped together Nazi collaborators, SS troops and the Ukrainian military of today who are fighting against Russia," Putin told an audience at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi in response to a question. "This only confirms our thesis that one of our goals in Ukraine is denazification." Read More Russian missile strike kills more than 50 Ukrainians gathered for wake – in deadliest such attack in months Former Russian state TV journalist gets 8 1/2-year sentence in absentia for Ukraine war criticism Russia facing ‘functional defeat’ in the Black Sea – but Kyiv allies warn they are running out of ammunition Russia may attack civilian ships with sea mines and blame Ukraine, UK warns

Uruguayan Jose Luis Inciarte, one of 16 survivors of a 1972 Andean plane crash immortalized in the film "Alive," died in his home city of Montevideo Thursday...

At least 930 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine in the past 24 hours, Kyiv’s officials claimed. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in its battlefield update on Thursday morning also claimed Vladimir Putin has lost approximately 302,420 military personnel since the invasion began on 24 February last year. The Independent has not been able to verify claims of the battlefield casualties. Kyiv claimed that in addition to the casualties, 43 armoured vehicles, 42 artillery systems, 18 of Russia’s tanks and one aircraft had also been damaged in the same period. Russia has not confirmed the total personnel losses it has suffered in Ukraine. Similarly, Ukraine has also not confirmed its own military personnel losses in the continuing war. This comes as Ukraine attacked Russian positions over the Black Sea and Crimea in an early morning attack on Thursday. The Russian ministry of defence said its air defence shot down six aircraft-type drones over the region, of which five were shot down over Crimea. The fighting has intensified on five fronts of the battlefield in the past day, Ukrainian military officials said. Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian positions on the Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Shakhtarsk fronts in Donetsk but failed to make any success, the General Staff said. It added that a total of 57 combat clashes took place on the war frontline, including 5 missiles and 75 air strikes. Russia also fired 56 rocket strikes using Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) at the Ukrainian positions and other settlements. The Russian troops have also targeted residential buildings and civilian settlements, it said. Accounts from the Russian ministry of defence and its active military bloggers claimed its forces shot down two Su-27 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force and also targeted two Leopard tanks. The war frontline, despite surges in fighting on multiple occasions on several fronts this year, has largely remained static. While the Ukrainian counteroffensive successfully restored some of Kyiv’s territory back from Russian control, the region has seen concentration of fighting along multiple axes with no major gains. The war is now “gradually moving into a positional form”, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi told The Economist in an interview. He said there was a stalemate on the battlefield similar to that seen during the First World War, owing to technological and tactical parity between Russian and Ukrainian forces. To break this stalemate, Ukraine will need to gain air superiority, breach Russia’s mine barriers in depth, increase Kyiv’s effectiveness of counterbattery combat, create and train necessary reserves, and build up electronic warfare capabilities.

Gary Lineker has come out swinging for Elon Musk over his management of Twitter. In an interview with the Guardian, the sports pundit said the tech mogul was bad at running the social media platform, and called him "rubbish". He said: "As for Elon Musk, I think perhaps the most interesting thing for me is that, for someone that’s spent so much money on Twitter, he is actually not very good on Twitter. He’s rubbish. I think that’s quite amusing.” Musk bought the platform last year and since doing so has been criticised for making a number of unpopular changes like making people pay for their blue ticks and renaming Twitter 'X' recently. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Elsewhere in the interview, Lineker slagged off TalkTV and GB News. “I’m obviously not a fan," he said. "And they don’t seem very good at telly. What I’m always staggered by is the incredible lack of anything that approaches any kind of quality broadcasting. I’m not just talking about it in terms of political bias, I’m talking about the quality of the television that’s rubbish.” He also said the BBC should stop trying to placate its political opponents and said bosses spend too much time worrying about the views of people “who will hate you forever”. Lineker is not one to mince his words. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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