Russian missile strikes kill at least 23 in Ukraine
Russian missiles struck a city in central Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine’s president alleged the attack deliberately targeted civilians in locations without military value.
Officials said Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea struck civilian buildings in Vinnytsia, a city 167 miles southwest of the capital, Kyiv. Vinnytsia region Gov. Serhiy Borzov said Ukrainian air defenses downed two of the four Russian missiles that were launched.
National Police Chief Ihor Klymenko said only six bodies have been identified so far, while 39 people are still missing. Three children where among the dead. Of the 65 people hospitalized, five remain in critical condition while 34 sustained severe injuries, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
“There was a building of a medical organization. When the first rocket hit it, glass fell from my windows,” said Vinnytsia resident Svitlana Kubas, 74. “And when the second wave came, it was so deafening that my head is still buzzing. It tore out the very outermost door, tore it right through the holes.”
Along with hitting buildings, the missiles ignited a fire that spread to 50 cars in a parking lot, officials said.
“These are quite highprecision missiles. … They knew where they were hitting,” Borzov told the
AP.
Russia hasn’t officially confirmed the strike. But Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-controlled Russian television network RT, said on her messaging app channel that military officials told her a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian “Nazis.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of intentionally aiming missiles at civilians. The strike happened as government officials from about 40 countries met in The Hague, Netherlands,
to discuss coordinating investigations and prosecutions of potential war crimes committed in Ukraine.
“Every day Russia is destroying the civilian population, killing Ukrainian children, directing missiles at civilian objects. Where there is no military (targets). What is it if not an open act of terrorism?” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky echoed Zelenskyy, calling the missile attack a “war crime“intended to intimidate Ukrainians while the country’s forces hold out in the east.
The U.S. embassy in Kyiv issued a security alert late Thursday urging all U.S. citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave immediately.
The alert, which appeared to be in response to the Vinnytsia attack, asserted that large gatherings and organized events “may serve as Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including its western regions.”
Vinnytsia is one of Ukraine’s largest cities, with a prewar population of 370,000. Thousands of people from eastern Ukraine, where Russia has concentrated its offensive, have fled there since Russia invaded Ukraine on
Feb. 24.
In other developments:
Russian-installed officials in southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region announced that they planned to hold an early September referendum on incorporating the region into Russia.