Russian missile hits Ukrainian president’s home city as it mourns deaths in an earlier attack
A Russian missile slammed into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city on Wednesday, local authorities said, just as Kryvyi Rih was observing an official day of mourning for an attack the previous day that killed four civilians at a hotel.
The latest attack on the city struck civilian infrastructure, wounding eight people, local administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said on social media.
Tuesday’s attack, which also wounded five people, was part of a barrage of dozens of missiles and drones across Ukraine that Russia launched for a second consecutive day.
“When Kryvyi Rih is in mourning, the enemy attacks again. And it once again aims at civilians,” regional head Serhii Lysak said Wednesday.
Russia stepped up its aerial attacks on Ukraine on Monday, firing more than 100 missiles and a similar number of drones in its biggest onslaught in weeks.
The intensified campaign coincided with what could prove to be a decisive period of the war, which Russia launched on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russian forces have been driving deeper into Ukraine’s partly occupied eastern Donetsk region, whose total capture is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defense in the area.
Russia battered much of Ukraine with scores of missiles and drones that killed four people, injured more than a dozen, and damaged energy facilities.
At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion onto Russian soil since World War II. The move is in part an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.
At the hotel in Kryvyi Rih, rescuers on Wednesday found a final body under the rubble. The rescue operation then ended.
Meanwhile, Ukraine claimed its anti-aircraft defenses destroyed a Russian Su-25 jet in the Donetsk region.
Ukraine also kept up its long-range drone attacks on Russia’s rear logistical areas.
A Ukrainian security official told the Associated Press that an operation by the country’s military intelligence agency, known by its acronym GUR, struck oil depots in Russia’s Rostov and Kirov regions Wednesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the strikes, did not provide further details. It would be the first known Ukrainian attack on the Kirov region, which is about 600 miles northeast of the Ukrainian border.
The governor of Kirov, Alexander Sokolov, said three Ukrainian drones fell near an oil depot in the region but didn’t damage it.
Novikov writes for the Associated Press.
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