Death toll rises after Russian missile strikes Ukraine apartment building
KYIV — The death toll from a Russian missile strike on an apartment block in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro over the weekend continued to rise on Monday, even as dozens remained missing in the debris.
Rescuers continued to search the rubble of the ninestory residential building, which partly collapsed after being struck by a missile on Saturday. Authorities said at least 40 people are dead, including three children, after more bodies were recovered during the night.
At least 75 people were wounded in the strike, including 14 children, according to Valentyn Reznichenko, the military governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region. He said more than 100 people survived the strike.
In sub-zero temperatures, there was little hope of finding any more survivors, although Reznichenko insisted — like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the previous evening — that “the search for people under the rubble continues.”
The destruction of the block of flats has become a symbol of the Russian invasion’s brutal toll on Ukrainian civilians. The strike on Dnipro was the worst of numerous Russian air attacks over the weekend that particularly targeted Ukrainian civilian energy infrastructure.
The European Union condemned Russia for the missile strike, saying that Russia’s “continued heinous strikes” on Ukraine would only serve to strengthen the EU’s resolve to support Ukraine.
“Russia continues to show its inhuman face and applies its brutal missile terror indiscriminately,” an EU foreign affairs spokesperson said in Brussels on Monday.
The European Commission also announced that the first payout of $3.2 billion in loans for Ukraine from a nearly $19.5 billion support package is to be issued on Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chief spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, rejected blame for the deadly attack on Dnipro on Monday. Peskov instead sought to blame Ukrainian air defenses for the missile strike.
The missile that struck the building in Dnipro appeared to have been a Kh-22 cruise missile, also known as an X-22 missile, Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defense, told the New York Times. She said it was one of five of them fired at Ukrainian territory that day.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office told the Times that the Kh-22 missile that appears to have hit Dnipro could have been launched by only one Russian unit, the 52nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment.
“This type of missile leads to the greatest human casualties, because the missile is extremely inaccurate,” the office told the Times. “Therefore, the use of such weapons for targets in densely populated areas is clearly a war crime.”
Immediately after the Dnipro attack, pro-Russian news outlets and influential military bloggers claimed that the apartment building was not the target, but had been struck by fragments of the missile after Ukrainian air defenses tried to intercept it. But Ukrainian forces were quick to deny that, and the evidence from the scene pointed to a direct strike on the building.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine have no weapons capable of shooting down this type of missile,” Maliar told the times.
Peskov claimed that Russia has only attacked military targets in Ukraine, even though Russian shells have repeatedly killed many civilians throughout the invasion.
More than 210 Kh-22 missiles have been used in attacks on Ukrainian territory since Russia invaded, including a strike on a shopping center in Kremenchuk in June that killed 18 people, the New York Times reported.
Russia continued to shift the blame for the recent intensification of hostilities onto Kyiv during a phone call between Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdo an.
“Vladimir Putin emphasized the Kyiv regime’s destructive policy of continuing to intensify the hostilities with the support of its Western sponsors, which are still sending more arms and combat equipment to Ukraine,” the Kremlin said following the call.
The Kremlin again accused Kyiv of a lack of willingness to negotiate, saying that Ukraine had rejected their recent ceasefire proposal.
Ukraine has repeatedly stressed its willingness to negotiate, but only if Russian soldiers withdraw from Ukraine and return the country’s territory that is being occupied in violation of international law.
New York Times writers Megan Specia and Nicole Tung contributed to this report.