Death toll in missile strike on Dnipro apartment building rises to 40

The death toll from Russia’s weekend missile attack on an apartment building in the city of Dnipro in southeastern Ukraine has risen to 40, authorities said on Monday, as Western analysts pointed to indications the Kremlin was preparing for war to be drawn out in Ukraine after nearly 11 months. war.

About 1,700 people live in the multi-story building, and search and rescue crews have been working nonstop since Saturday’s strike to find victims and survivors in the rubble. The regional government said 39 people have been rescued so far and another 30 are still missing. Authorities said at least 75 were injured.

The reported death toll makes it the largest single attack on Ukrainian civilians since earlier this summer, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. Residents say the apartment tower has no military facilities.

Oleksander Anyskevych said he was in his apartment when the missile struck.

“Boom – and that’s it. We saw that we were alive and that’s all,” Anyskevych said there when he went to the site to see the wrecked apartment.

WATCH | Search and rescue efforts are ongoing:

He told The Associated Press that he knew someone who died in the wreckage. One of his son’s classmates lost his parents.

Dnipro residents took flowers, candles and toys to the ruins.

“All of us could have been there,” said local resident Iryna Skrypnyk.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the attack, and others, “an inhuman aggression” because it directly targeted civilians.

“There will be no impunity for these crimes,” he said in a tweet on Sunday.

Asked about Monday’s attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military did not target residential buildings and suggested the Dnipro building was hit by Ukrainian air defense actions.

The attack on the building comes amid a wider range of Russian cruise missiles in Ukraine. Ukraine’s military said Sunday it had no means of intercepting the type of Russian missile that struck residential buildings in Dnipro.

Deadly incident in Kherson

Fierce fighting continues to rage in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where military analysts say both sides are expected to suffer heavy army casualties. There is no independent verification of possible developments.

Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province form the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Russian President Vladimir Putin identified as a focus from the beginning of the war. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv forces there since 2014.

Russian and Belarusian air forces began joint exercises on Monday in Belarus, which borders Ukraine and is the staging ground for Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Russia has sent warplanes to Belarus for training.

Elsewhere, Russian forces attacked Kherson city and Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 14 others in the last 24 hours, Regional Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said. In the city of Kherson, shelling destroyed a hospital, a children’s disability center, a shipyard, critical infrastructure and apartment buildings.

WATCH | Germany has not yet signed on to re-export tanks:

Russian forces attacked the city of Zaporizhzhia, destroying industrial infrastructure and wounding five people, two of them children, said the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.

Russian air defenses shot down seven drones in the Black Sea near the port of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the head of Sevastopol stationed in Russia, said.

In other developments on Monday:

• German defense minister Christine Lambrecht resigned after widespread domestic criticism of her performance. The resignation comes at a sensitive time, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz facing increasing pressure to make another major step in German military aid to Ukraine by agreeing to send Leopard 2 battle tanks. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected in Germany on Thursday to discuss further support. further for Ukraine, including whether to send German-made tanks.

• An unidentified Russian man reported to be a former senior member of Russian private military contractor Wagner Group has applied for asylum in Norway, authorities there said Monday. The Wagner group, which includes many convicts recruited in Russian prisons, has cooperated with regimes in Africa to advance Russian interests before working in Ukraine. The group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is Putin’s desired US ally