[ad_1]
The death toll from Russia’s weekend missile attack on an apartment building in southeastern Ukraine has reached 44, officials said Tuesday, as the body of another child was pulled from the wreckage.
The attack on the city of Dnipro was the war’s deadliest attack on civilians in a single location since last spring.
Those who died in the attack on Saturday afternoon included five children, and 79 people were injured, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine. With the search for survivors called off, the final toll included two dozen people initially listed as missing in the multi-story building, which housed about 1,700, he said.
Emergency crews cleared some nine metric tons of rubble during a non-stop search and rescue operation, Dnipro City Council said. About 400 people lost their homes, with 72 apartments damaged and another 236 damaged beyond repair, he added.
Russia’s latest deadly attack on civilian targets in the nearly 11-month war has sparked outrage. It also prompted a surprise resignation on Tuesday from an adviser to the Ukrainian president, who said a Russian missile exploded and fell after the Ukrainian air defense system was shot down, a version of events that would take some of the blame from Russian forces.
Oleksii Arestovich’s comments in an interview Saturday night sparked protests. He said during the stop that his remarks were a “fundamental mistake.” Ukraine’s air force has insisted that the country’s military does not have a system capable of intercepting Russian Kh-22 missiles, which it says are the type that hit apartment buildings.
“Since the beginning of the Russian military aggression, more than 210 missiles of this type have been launched on the territory of Ukraine. None of them were shot down by anti-aircraft defense,” the air force said Saturday.
Dnipro attack should be part of ICC investigation: Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to bring those responsible for the attack to justice, saying it was a “fundamental duty” for Ukraine and its Western allies.
“This attack in Dnipro, as well as other similar attacks, falls, primarily, under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court,” he said in a video address late Monday.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday that the weekend’s long-range missile attack, the first in two weeks, targeted Ukraine’s power grid.
The ministry noted that the Kh-22 is “notoriously inaccurate when used against ground targets, as its radar guidance system is not good at distinguishing targets in urban areas,” suggesting that it may have been a factor in the deaths in Dnipro.
The same missiles were used in other incidents that caused large civilian casualties, he said, including an attack on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk last summer that officials said killed more than 20 people.
The deadliest attack involving civilians before Saturday was the April 9, 2022 attack on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk that left at least 52 people dead, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.
Such incidents have helped bolster international support for Ukraine in its fight against Kremlin attacks. Winter has caused a slowdown in fighting, but military analysts say a new push from both sides is possible when the weather improves.
As it happens6:24 a.mHe was driving home when a missile struck Dnipro, Ukraine. So he went out and helped
Vasyl Pidluzhnyi was driving home from work in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro and talking to his wife on the phone when he heard a loud explosion, followed by a huge cloud of thick black smoke from an apartment building about a kilometer away. He told As It Happens host Nil Köksal what happened next.
Russia is preparing to mobilize more troops
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that the country’s military will increase its readiness from 1.15 million now to 1.5 million from this year to 2026.
As part of the buildup, the military will form an army corps in the northwestern region of Karelia, near Finland, as well as three new motorized infantry and two airborne divisions. The military will also add seven existing motorized infantry brigades to the division.
The announcement came a day after US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and other US officials met in Kyiv with Zelenskyy. He reaffirmed his “strong and steadfast commitment to Ukraine,” said US State Department spokesman Ned Price.
US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Monday visited Ukrainian soldiers training at a military base in Germany under US command. More than 600 Ukrainian troops began an expanded training program at the camp the previous day.
“This is one of those times when you want to make a difference, this is it,” Milley told the commanders.
Germany, meanwhile, has so far not reached a conclusion on authorizing the delivery of domestically produced Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine.
The tanks, which are the workhorse of armies across Europe, appear to be the only option available in sufficient numbers to give the Ukrainian army the firepower to decisively repel Russian forces.
[ad_2]
Source link