The heaviest Russian airstrikes in almost two months rained down on Ukraine in the early hours of Friday, slaughtering 25 people as they slept.
In the central city of Uman, a missile blasted into one of the upper floors of a residential apartment building. Emergency workers raced to the scene of fire and rubble in an effort to save lives, but regional officials confirmed at least 23 people had died—including three young children and a toddler.
“We tried to find ways to leave the building. I heard a voice of a child who was screaming in the flat next to ours. We wanted to help other people. There was smoke and fire everywhere,” one resident told the BBC of the horrific ordeal.
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Also on Friday, a missile hit a house in the southern city of Dnipro. Regional Gov. Serhiy Lysak said a 2-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman were killed in the blast, which left another three people injured.
Rescuers in Uman were still working to secure the site of the attack, which destroyed more than half of the the 46 units in the residential building, according to local reports.
The bombardment, which comes as Kyiv gears up to launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory occupied by Russian forces, appears to have been just a small part of the devastation Moscow had sought, with the Ukrainian military claiming to have shot down 21 of 23 cruise missiles launched by Russia.
In the aftermath of the strikes, Russian state media quoted the Kremlin’s defense ministry baselessly claiming that the attacks were targeting Ukrainian army reserves.
“Russia’s Air Force carried out a collective missile strike using long-range high-precision weapons overnight targeting temporary deployment sites of Ukrainian army reserve units,” a spokesperson for the ministry said.
The capital city of Kyiv was also targeted in Friday’s barrage of missile strikes, though no fatalities have been reported.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleskii Reznikov has threatened Moscow with an “iron fist” response to the massacre, using “new weapons” recently delivered to Kyiv by Western allies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, urged allies to respond to the attacks with harsher sanctions on Moscow.
“Evil can be stopped by weapons—our defenders are doing it. And it can be stopped by sanctions—global sanctions must be enhanced,” he said Friday.
Read it at Reuters
