War in Ukraine
Russia steps up bombardment of cities War in Ukraine
39 killed, scores hurt in latest attacks using long-range missiles on crowded buildings
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KYIV • Air-raid sirens sounded across Kyiv yesterday, as Russia stepped up long-range bombardment of Ukrainian cities that killed at least 39 people in three days and wounded scores.
Late on Friday, Russian missiles hit the central city of Dnipro, killing three people and wounding 15, Governor Valentyn Reznychenko said on Telegram.
Rockets hit an industrial plant and a street next to it, he said. Footage on social media showed thick black smoke rising from the buildings and burning cars.
Eight people were killed and 13 injured in a string of shellings in 10 locations in the eastern region of Donetsk, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a television interview.
On Thursday, Kalibr cruise missiles launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea hit an office building in Vinnytsia, a city of 370,000 people about 200km south-west of the capital Kyiv.
Ukraine said the strike killed at least 23 people and injured dozens.
Yesterday, missile strikes were reported in the north-eastern city of Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region, and the south-central city of Nikopol, killing at least five more.
The attacks were the latest in a series of Russian hits in recent weeks using long-range missiles on crowded buildings in cities far from the front, each killing dozens of people. In Vinnytsia, residents placed teddy bears and flowers at a makeshift memorial to those killed.
Among the dead was Liza, a four-year-old girl with Down syndrome, found in the debris next to a pram. Images of her pushing the same pram, posted by her mother on a blog less than two hours before the attack, quickly went viral.
Her severely injured mother, Ms Iryna Dmitrieva, was being kept in an information blackout at a hospital for fear that finding out about her daughter would kill her, doctors said.
"She is suffering from burns, chest injuries, abdominal injuries, liver and spleen injuries," said Dr Oleksandr Fomin, chief doctor at Vinnytsia Emergency Hospital. "We have stitched the organs together. The bones were crushed, as if she went through a meat grinder."
Were she told of her daughter's death, "we would lose her".
Four-year-old a picture of joy before tragic end in missile strike
KYIV • A happy, spirited four-year-old beams proudly as she pushes her own pram in a video recorded by her mother to chronicle their day out together in central Ukraine.
An hour or so later, she was dead, her short life brought to a brutal end by a Russian missile, the pink buggy overturned in the street and mottled with her blood, next to her lifeless body.
Liza Dmitrieva, who had Down syndrome, was being taken by her mother, Ms Iryna Dmitrieva, on Thursday to a therapy centre in Vinnytsia, 250km south-west of the capital Kyiv.
In the footage, which Ms Dmitrieva posted on social media at 9.38am, Liza can be seen bouncing along the pavement in white leggings and a sky-blue top with what appears to be a daisy stitched onto the shoulder.
Beyond the tribulations of living in a country at war, neither had any special cause to be afraid. They were hundreds of kilometres from the nearest front line.
"Where are we going, sweetheart?" the woman asks her daughter on camera.
"Alla!" the child replies. Alla is a common female first name in Ukraine.
"To see Alla?" the mother asks.
"Alla!" the youngster chirps again, an impish grin playing across her face.
Around 80 minutes later, a barrage of rockets launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea hit Vinnytsia, devastating the city centre and killing 23 people, including two other children.
Ms Dmitrieva lost a leg in the attack and was initially reported to have died in hospital, but the head of state police said on Friday she was still fighting for her life.
She regularly posted pictures and news of her daughter's exploits and many challenges online, where the little girl had become something of a social media starlet. An Instagram account set up by Ms Dmitrieva and dedicated to Liza amassed nearly 20,000 followers, though this had grown to 80,000 by Friday morning as the horror of the attack sent shock waves around the world.
First Lady Olena Zelenska said in the early hours of Friday that she was "horrified" by images of the overturned pushchair released by the local authorities - only to learn that it belonged to Liza, whom she had met.
"Reading the news, I realised that I know this girl. Knew... I will not write down all the words I would like to say to those who killed her," she wrote on Instagram.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Despite the mounting casualties, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered military units operating in all areas of Ukraine to step up their operations.
The Russian Defence Ministry said Mr Shoigu "gave the necessary instructions to further increase the actions of groups in all operational areas in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions".
An official with Kyiv's nuclear agency, meanwhile, accused Russia of using Europe's largest nuclear power plant as a base to store weapons - including "missile systems" - and to shell the surrounding areas.
Located on the Dnipro river in south-eastern Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been under Russian control since the early weeks of Moscow's invasion, though it is still being operated by Ukrainian staff.
The president of Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom said on Friday in a televised interview that the situation was "extremely tense", with up to 500 Russian soldiers controlling the plant.
"The occupiers bring their machinery there, including missile systems, from which they already shell the other side of the river Dnipro and the territory of Nikopol," Mr Petro Kotin said, referring to the city across the water.
REUTERS