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At least 22 people were killed and hundreds injured in Russian rocket attacks that hit central Ukraine on Thursday, authorities in Kiev said. The Ukrainian president accused Russia of deliberately attacking the civilian population without any military advantage.
Ukrainian officials said the high-precision Kalibr missiles were fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea and hit a building in Vinnytsia, about 268 kilometers from the capital Kiev.
The governor of the Vinnytsia region, Serhiy Borzov, said Ukrainian air defense shot down two of the four missiles fired.
The head of the National Police, Ihor Klymenko, said that only six of those killed have been identified so far, while another 39 are still missing.
Of the 52 wounded hospitalized, five are in critical condition, while 34 have serious injuries, Olha Zadarozhnia, head of the regional health care department, told the Associated Press news agency. Three children were among the injured.
Russia has not officially confirmed the attack. But Margarita Simonyan, who runs the government-controlled Russian television network RT, wrote on her messaging app channel that military officials had told her that a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian “Nazis”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of deliberately targeting the civilian population. The attack occurred as officials from about 40 countries met in The Hague, Netherlands, to discuss coordinating investigations and prosecutions related to possible war crimes committed in Ukraine.
“Every day Russia is destroying the civilian population, killing Ukrainian children, launching missiles at civilian objects. Where there are no military targets. What can it be other than an open act of terrorism?”President Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram network.
Vinnytsia is one of Ukraine’s largest cities, with a pre-war population of 370,000. Thousands of people have fled eastern Ukraine, where Russia has focused its offensive, since the start of the war on February 24.
After rockets hit the buildings, the fire engulfed about 50 parked cars, officials said. Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said he thought the strike was a pattern of the Kremlin’s previous strikes on residential areas aimed “at trying to pressure Kiev into making concessions”.
“Russia used the same tactics when it hit Odesa region, Kremenchuk, Chasiv Yar and other areas,” said Mr. Zhdanov. “The Kremlin will show that it will continue to use unconventional methods of war and kill civilians in defiance of Kiev and the entire international community.”
Russian forces continued artillery and rocket attacks in eastern Ukraine, mainly in Donetsk province, after taking control of neighboring Luhansk. The town of Lysychansk, the last major bastion of the Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, fell to Russian forces at the beginning of the month./Voa
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