DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) – The death toll from the Ukraine war’s deadliest attack on civilians in one location since last spring reached 45 at an apartment building where a Russian missile blew up in the southeastern city of Dnipro, officials said on Tuesday .
Six children were killed and 79 injured in Saturday afternoon’s strike, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram. According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, the toll included two dozen people originally listed as missing from the multi-story building that housed about 1,700 people.
Rescue workers cleared about 9 tons (9.9 tons) of debris during a non-stop search and rescue operation, the Dnipro City Council said. About 400 people lost their homes, 72 homes were completely destroyed and another 236 were damaged beyond repair, she added.
People gathered at the site on Tuesday to lay flowers, light candles and bring stuffed animals. For the third day in a row, Oleksandr Pohorielov came from Dnipro to mourn.
“It’s like coming to your family’s cemetery. It’s a reminder to say goodbye properly. To stay human,” he explained as an intense smell of burning emanated from the ruins of the building.
Volunteers helped Nadiia Yaroshenko’s son to escape from her third-floor apartment on a makeshift ladder, but her white cat Beliash refused to go. He remains in his favorite spot by a now-blown-out window, Yaroshenko said, desperately trying to spot him from the courtyard with a flashlight.
“We cannot reach the apartment even with rescue workers because the apartment is in a state of emergency and danger. Walls could come down there any minute,” she said.
The latest deadly Russian attack on a civilian target in the nearly 11-month war has sparked outrage. It also led to the surprise resignation on Tuesday of a Ukrainian presidential aide who had said the Russian missile exploded and crashed after Ukraine’s air defense system shot it down, a version that would take some of the blame away from Kremlin forces.
Oleksii Arestovych’s comments in an interview on Saturday caused an outcry. He said when he finished that his remarks were “a fundamental error”. The Ukrainian Air Force has stressed that the country’s military does not have a system capable of shooting down the Russian Kh-22 supersonic missiles that hit the apartment building.
Zelenskyy vowed to “ensure that all Russian murderers, anyone who gives and carries out orders to launch rocket terror against our people, are brought to justice.” And to make sure they serve their sentences.”
Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that the weekend’s long-range missile barrage, the first of its kind in two weeks, targeted Ukraine’s power grid.
The Kh-22 was developed in Soviet times to attack enemy ships. It can also be used against ground targets, but with much less accuracy. Observers have said that Russia is increasingly using older weapons, including those intended for other purposes, to attack targets in Ukraine, which could be a sign of the depletion of Russia’s stockpiles of modern precision weapons. The British Ministry noted that the Kh-22 is “notoriously inaccurate when used against ground targets, as its radar guidance system is poor at distinguishing targets in urban areas,” suggesting that this may have been a factor in the fatalities in the Dnipro could.
Similar missiles have been used in other incidents that have caused high civilian casualties, including an attack on a shopping center in central Ukraine’s Kremenchuk in June that officials said killed more than 20 people.
The deadliest attack on civilians before Saturday was an April 9 strike at a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk that killed at least 52 people, according to project The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch.
A makeshift memorial to the victims of the Dnipro bombings has appeared in front of an apartment building in Moscow, an unusual act in Russia, where even mild criticism of the government’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is often suppressed. Amid snow, flowers and stuffed toy animals were laid at the monument to prominent Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka, along with a photo of the destroyed building and a sign that reads “Dnipro. 01/14/2023.”
Attacks on civilians have helped bolster international support for Ukraine in its fight against the Kremlin invasion. The winter has seen fighting slow down, but military analysts say a renewed push from both sides is likely once the weather improves.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu underscored Russia’s growing military needs, saying on Tuesday the country’s military would increase the number of troops from 1.15 million to 1.5 million in the coming years.
As part of the build-up, 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 upgrade seven motorized infantry brigades into divisions.
On the Ukraine side, the top US military officer, Army General Mark Milley, traveled to the Ukraine-Polish border on Tuesday for the first meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with General Valerii Zaluzhnyi in southeastern Poland. On Monday, Milley visited troops from Ukraine who were training under US commanders at a military base in Germany.
Help is also on the way from the Netherlands. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in Washington on Tuesday that his country plans to “join” US and German efforts to train and equip Ukraine with advanced Patriot missile defense systems.
It remains unclear whether the Dutch will ultimately send Patriot systems, although Zelenskyy said in his late-night address on Tuesday that the Netherlands had agreed to send a battery of the equipment to Ukraine. “So now there are three guaranteed batteries. But that’s just the beginning. We are working on new solutions to strengthen our air defenses,” said Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian troops are at the Fort Sill army base in Oklahoma, learning how to operate and maintain Patriot, the most advanced surface-to-air missile system western Ukraine has pledged to repel Russian airstrikes.
Ukraine’s first lady did her part to help on Tuesday. She urged world leaders and business leaders at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to use their influence against a Russian invasion that she says is killing children and struggling with food insecurity in the world.
As the first anniversary of the war approaches, Olena Zelenska said that parents in Ukraine see tears in their eyes watching doctors try to save their children from the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster.
“What you all have in common is that you are really influential,” Zelenska told attendees. “But there’s something that separates you, which is that you don’t all use that influence, or sometimes you use it in a way that separates you even more.”
Meanwhile, the head of the UN nuclear agency is visiting several of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants this week to oversee the establishment of a permanent presence of inspectors in each of them to oversee operations and ensure safety.
Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday that the missions “will make a real difference by assisting Ukrainian operators and regulators in fulfilling their national responsibilities for ensuring nuclear safety and security.”
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