Russian attack rips Ukrainian city anew
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian missiles hit residential areas in an eastern Ukrainian city Thursday for the second time in 24 hours, while top European Union officials held talks with the government in Kyiv as the war with Russia approaches its one-year anniversary.
The latest strikes in Kramatorsk came as rescue crews searched for survivors in the rubble of an apartment building hit late Wednesday by a Russian missile that killed at least three people and wounded 21 others.
At least one more victim was thought to be under the debris, Ukraine’s presidential office said.
“Kramatorsk again shattered by explosions — the Russians made two more rocket strikes,” regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post.
He said at least five civilians were wounded in the latest strikes, which hit residential buildings as well as a children’s clinic and a school in the heart of the city.
Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko urged residents to stay in shelters.
Kramatorsk is a major hub for the Ukrainian military in the east.
No further details of Thursday’s attack were immediately available.
Russia has frequently struck apartment buildings during the war, causing civilian casualties, although the Kremlin has denied targeting residential structures.
Russian shelling across Ukraine over the previous 24 hours killed at least eight civilians
and wounded 29 others, the presidential office said. Along with the victims in Kramatorsk, the toll included four who died when a Russian mortar shell hit a basement where they were sheltering in the northeastern Chernihiv region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ahead of what officials described as a summit today. The last such summit was held in Kyiv in October 2021 — a few months before the war started Feb. 24, 2022.
Von der Leyen praised wartime Ukraine’s “brilliant application” for EU membership, though Brussels officials note that Ukraine joining the 27-nation
bloc is still a long way off. Ahead of possible membership,
Von der Leyen said, the commission is proposing that
Kyiv “join key European programs — this will give Ukraine benefits close to those of EU membership in many areas.”
EU assistance for Ukraine, she said, has reached $55 billion since the start of Russia’s war.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin drew on national pride at a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in the World War II battle of Stalingrad as he sought to stiffen support at home for the fight in Ukraine, where the Kremlin’s forces have suffered some embarrassing setbacks in recent months.
“The strength of the defenders of Stalingrad is the most important moral beacon for Russian soldiers,” Putin said in Volgograd, the name given to Stalingrad in 1961. “All that defines Russia and makes us strong and confident in ourselves, the rightness of our cause and our victory.”
Putin laid a wreath at the eternal flame of the memorial complex to the fallen Red Army soldiers in Volgograd, which stretches along the western bank of the Volga River. The memorial is dominated by a 279-foot sculpture of a swordwielding woman. It is Europe’s tallest statue.
Afterwards, he said: “Now, regrettably, we see that the ideology of Nazism, in its modern guise, in its modern manifestation, once again poses direct threats to the security of our country. Again and again we are forced to repulse the aggression of the collective West.”
Putin and other Russian officials frequently characterize Ukraine as a hotbed of neo-nazi beliefs, although Zelenskyy is of Jewish descent.