From Sergey Karzai
VENICIYA, Ukraine (Archyde.com) – Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, far from the front lines, on Thursday in an attack Ukrainian officials called a war crime and said killed at least 23 people, including three children.
The strike, which Ukraine said was carried out by Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, came a day following he achieved a breakthrough in talks between Moscow and Kiev on lifting a ban on Ukraine’s grain exports that revealed the two sides were still some distance from a settlement. peaceful.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram, “What is this, if not a clear terrorist act?”
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the United Nations, said that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is shocked by this missile attack, adding that “the Secretary-General condemns any attacks once morest civilians or civilian infrastructure and reiterates his call for accountability for such violations.”
The Russian Defense Ministry, which denies deliberately targeting civilians, has not commented on the strike.
The Ukrainian state emergency service said on its Facebook page that 23 people, including three children, were killed, 66 were taken to hospital and 39 others are still missing.
Zelensky told an international conference aimed at prosecuting war crimes in Ukraine that the attack took place on a “normal and peaceful city”.
“Cruise missiles hit two community facilities, destroyed homes and a medical center, and set fire to cars and trams,” he added.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denis Monastirsky said air defenses later intercepted two more missiles.
Russia, which launched what it called its “special military operation” once morest Ukraine on February 24, says it is using high-precision weapons to destroy Ukraine’s military infrastructure to protect its security.
An official Ukrainian military website stated that the headquarters of the Ukrainian Air Force are located in the city of Vinnytsia, which has a population of 370,000 people and is located 200 kilometers southwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The Ukrainian Air Force said in March that Russia had tried to target headquarters with cruise missiles at the time.
Video footage showed a cloud of thick black smoke rising from a high-rise building, while photos posted online by the state emergency service showed gray smoke then rising from the remains of burning cars and debris.
One of the photos showed an overturned abandoned cart on the street.
In a tweet, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of committing “another war crime”.
“This is terrorism,” Kuleba wrote. Deliberate killing of civilians to spread fear. Russia is a terrorist country and should be legally described in this way.”
Fighting on the Eastern Front
The United States and more than 40 other countries agreed on Thursday to coordinate investigations into suspected war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.
Russia denies the accusations. Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is currently the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said that attempts by the West to punish a nuclear power like Russia for the conflict in Ukraine might endanger humanity.
The Kremlin said Russia was ready to stop what the West calls Moscow’s unjustified war if Kyiv agrees to its terms.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said on Thursday that Moscow would respond positively if Kyiv was ready to resume peace negotiations, and that Kyiv should confirm its non-aligned, non-nuclear status and formally recognize the hard facts on the ground, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko as saying on Thursday.
Specifically, he said, this would mean recognizing that Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, is under Russian control and that two Russian-backed states in eastern Ukraine are no longer under Kyiv’s administration.
Meanwhile, a senior Russian-appointed official in a region of southern Ukraine that is part of Moscow’s control said on Thursday that the region would hold a referendum in early autumn on whether to join Russia.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it is not ready to cede any of its territory to a country it calls an enemy occupier and has said it intends to recover any lost territory by force.
Ukraine said on Thursday it had thwarted Russia’s attempts to launch a ground offensive on the front lines of the war hundreds of miles east of Vinnytsia, following Moscow focused its fire on and around two towns there it sees as springboards to seize larger cities.
Daniil Bezsonov, a Russia-backed official in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on Thursday that its armed forces and Russia were focusing their fire on the towns of Seversk and Soledar in eastern Ukraine.
He added that Russia intended to capture the two towns and then attack the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the east.
The Ukrainian military, which reported Russian shelling on Seversk, Solidar and Kramatorsk, said it maintains fighting lines on all fronts and repels all assault attempts.
An armed group affiliated with the Luhansk People’s Republic said on its Telegram channel that Russian-backed separatist forces announced late on Thursday that they had taken control of the residential areas of Stryabevka and Nova Kamyanka, east of Soledar.
On Thursday, a separatist leader said two people were killed when Ukrainian forces bombed a bus station in the separatist-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
