10/06/2023 7:27 pm (current 10/6/2023 7:30 pm)
Russian brutal attack on civilians ©APA/AFP
According to military information from Kiev, Russia has once again massively attacked Ukraine with drone strikes and artillery fire. In the city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, a ten-year-old boy and his grandmother died after Russian shelling of a residential building, authorities announced on Friday. The devastating Russian rocket attack on the village of Hrosa in Kharkiv the previous day, killing more than 50 people, caused international outrage.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported Friday morning that the country’s anti-aircraft defenses destroyed 25 of 33 Russian drones. Southern Ukraine, including the Odessa region, was once again affected by attacks. In the Danube region, among other things, a grain silo was damaged and several trucks caught fire. There were no injuries, it was said.
According to the General Staff in Kiev, more than 110 Ukrainian cities were under Russian artillery fire. Several Russian attacks were reportedly repelled.
After the attack on Hrosa there was great horror. The Russian army is “an absolute evil,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his video address on Thursday. EU and UN representatives also condemned the attack. According to Ukrainian authorities, 52 people, including a six-year-old child, were killed by Russian rocket fire in Hrosa, not far from the city of Kupyansk. Authorities had originally reported 51 deaths, but another person died in a hospital on Friday. Three people were reported missing.
At the time of the attack, villagers gathered at the cafe for a funeral ceremony for a deceased fellow citizen. Rescue work was completed in the evening, it was said, and no other victims were found under the rubble. According to Zelenskyy, just over 300 people recently lived in Hrosa. The worst Russian attack on the Kharkiv region since the start of the war destroyed a sixth of the village.
The Russian ambassador to Austria, Dmitri Ljubinski, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna on Friday over the attack. General Secretary Nikolaus Marschik spoke to him on Friday morning, the ministry said in a statement. “With this brutal attack on civilian targets, the Russian Federation is once again violating international humanitarian law. Those responsible for these war crimes must be held accountable. Austria will continue to work towards this together with other partners,” emphasized the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. .
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell strongly condemned the Russian attack. “Russia’s horrific terror against Ukraine’s civilian population shows no sign of abating and reached another grim milestone today,” Borrell said. It is a heinous attack on innocent civilians. Intentional attacks on civilians are war crimes.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also made serious accusations against Moscow. “Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited by international humanitarian law and must stop immediately”, demanded Guterres through his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. This left no doubt that UN representatives on the ground held Russia responsible for the attack.
According to Ukrainian media, Russian military forces again attacked targets in Ukraine with so-called kamikaze drones on Friday night. The drones, which arrived in three waves, targeted Cherkasy, in the interior of the country, and the port city of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, among others. Air defenses became active in both cities. It was later said that drones also attacked port infrastructure in the Danube district of Izmail, close to the Romanian border. A grain warehouse was damaged.
Russia, in turn, reported Ukrainian attacks. Among other things, the Sevastopol naval base on the occupied Crimean peninsula was attacked by Ukrainian naval drones on Friday morning, state agency TASS reported.
Meanwhile, the Kiev government announced on Friday that it had received the bodies of 64 fallen Russian soldiers. In return, an undisclosed number of bodies of dead soldiers were handed over to Russia.