Russian Shelling Kills Six in Ukraine as Zelensky Criticizes Moscow’s U.N. Role

Konstantynivka is about 16 miles west of Bakhmut, which has been the focus of Russia’s offensive in recent weeks. Ukraine’s last main supply roads to the city pass through Konstantynivka, making it an important staging ground for its defense of the city.

The attack came after Russia assumed charge of the monthlong rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday, a development Mr. Zelensky described as “absurd and destructive.”

“It’s hard to imagine anything that proves more the total bankruptcy of such institutions,” he said in his regular video address on Saturday, noting that Russian shelling had killed a five-month-old infant on Friday.

Mr. Yermak earlier described Russia’s assuming the presidency of the Security Council as a “symbolic blow to the rules-based system of international relations.”

Moscow has said it intends to exercise all of its rights in holding the presidency, which provides it the power to organize sessions, and is expected to use some of them to criticize U.S. arms exports to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister

Sergei Lavrov

is also expected to convene a session later in the month to discuss security in the Middle East, where both China and Russia are now playing a larger diplomatic role.

The last time Russia held the presidency of the Security Council was in February last year. Russian President

Vladimir Putin

announced what he calls the special military operation in Ukraine during an emergency session of the council to discuss Russia’s growing threat to Kyiv.

The International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Mr. Putin and another senior Kremlin official for their alleged involvement in the forced deportation of children from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. It marked the first time the leader of a nuclear superpower had been called to account before the court, an independent institution established in 2002 to end impunity for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

“This crime committed by Russia is one of the most cynical and [inhumane] crimes of our time,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address, vowing to hold Russia accountable.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, meanwhile, said Sunday that Kyiv’s forces had fought off more than 70 attacks from Russian forces in the east of the country during the previous 24 hours, including missile strikes on civilian targets. “Without any desired results on the battlefield, the enemy continues to cynically wage war against peaceful citizens,” the General Staff said, adding that the attacks resulted in deaths among the civilian population.

The Ukrainian military said some of the heaviest fighting continued to be centered around the city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian units repelled some 25 attacks.

The fight for Bakhmut has been going on for months, and both Ukraine and Russia are now under pressure as ammunition stockpiles dwindle and casualties on both sides mount. Russian forces had singled out the city, the center of the local mining industry, as a specific target for a winter offensive. But they have made little headway, despite the participation of forces from the paramilitary Wagner Group of

Yevgeny Prigozhin,

and have failed to capture the wider Donbas region by Moscow’s self-declared deadline of March 31.

The Institute for the Study of War think tank said Saturday that Russian Chief of the General Staff

Valery Gerasimov

is likely facing growing pressure to deliver results, and suggested there could be a further reshuffle in Russia’s senior command positions in the coming weeks.

Russian troops have also been making incremental advances on Avdiivka, seeking to encircle the eastern city that has been on the front line since an earlier phase of the conflict that began in 2014.

Mr. Yermak said Russia had launched a missile strike on Avdiivka on Saturday, hitting an administrative building and an infrastructure facility.

Later Sunday, an influential Russian military blogger was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg, marking the second time a prominent pro-war figure has been killed in an apparent bomb attack on Russian soil since the invasion of Ukraine.

The main investigation department of the Russian Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg said Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, died after an unknown device exploded in a cafe located in the center of the city, and that investigations are ongoing. More than two dozen people were injured.

In August, Russian authorities blamed Ukraine for the killing of Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent far-right Russian ideologue and herself an outspoken supporter of the war, in a car bombing just outside Moscow. U.S. intelligence agencies in October concluded that Ukraine was behind the attack, and that the U.S. wasn’t aware of the operation beforehand.

Kyiv has denied any role in the killing of Ms. Dugina.

—Ann M. Simmons contributed to this article.

Write to Isabel Coles at [email protected]