Russia-Ukraine war: A 10-year-old boy and his grandmother were killed in another Russian missile strike in Ukraine's Kharkiv city on Friday, a day after 51 people were killed in the same area in one of the deadliest attacks launched by Moscow in recent months.
Emergency crews pulled the boy's body from the rubble of a building in the aftermath of the Friday attack. He was wearing Spiderman-themed pajamas. An 11-month-old child was also injured in the attack, Ukraine's
Interior Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram.
A total of 30 people were injured in the attack and rescue operations were still underway, said Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov. Preliminary information indicated that two Iskander missiles were used in the attack, officials said. One of the missiles struck the street while the other hit a three-storey building, causing a blaze.
Debris and rubble littered the street. Surrounding buildings were blackened by the blast, which blew out windows and damaged parked cars.
Thursday's missile strike in Kharkiv
In one of the deadliest attacks on Ukraine, a Russian attack on a village in the northeast of the country killed 51 people and injured dozens, said officials. Presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak and Kharkiv Gov Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces shelled a shop and a cafe in the village of Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, around 1 pm.
A 6-year-old boy was among those killed in the attack, Syniehubov said, and one child was also among the wounded. The attack came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Granada in southern Spain to attend a summit of the European Political Community, which was formed in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Friday that Russia was responsible for the Hroza attack, insisting that Moscow does not target civilian facilities. UN human rights chief Volker Türk said that he was "shocked and saddened" by the attack.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the attack "demonstrated the depths of depravity Russian forces are willing to sink to" while White House Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asserted the importance of continued assistance to Ukraine as shown by the "horrifying" attack, BBC reported. Zelenskyy called the strike a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.”
Ukraine's future vis-a-vis foreign support
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy is grappling with the signs that Western support for his country’s war effort could be fraying. This comes as concerns about the resupply of Ukraine’s armed forces have deepened amid political turmoil in the United States and other geopolitical factors.
Slovakia, which has remained a strong ally of Ukraine, recently witnessed a pro-Russian candidate Robert Fico win the parliamentary elections. He had promised to withdraw support for Ukraine. The Republican camp in the US has also opposed assistance to Ukraine.
The Swedish government said on Friday that it plans to send to Ukraine a military aid package worth 2.2 billion kronor ($199 million), mainly consisting of 155-millimeter artillery ammunition. "We are preparing for it to be a long war, therefore we need to design our support long-term and sustainably,” Defense Minister Pål Jonson said.
(with agency inputs)
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