The UN secretary general said he was “dismayed” and the European Union denounced this Thursday new “atrocities” after the Russian attacks on a town in central Ukraine that left at least 23 dead, an “openly terrorist act” for the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Vinnytsia, a city far from the front lines, far west of the capital Kyiv, images released by Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service showed dozens of charred bodies and a ten-story building devastated by the explosion and fire that followed.
The Ukrainian relief reported Thursday night 23 dead, 29 missing, 71 people hospitalized and more than a hundred injured treated at the scene.
“A terrorist state”
According to the Ukrainian military, “three missiles” hit the parking lot and this commercial building in the city center, which houses offices and small shops. They were fired from submarines in the Black Sea, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat said.
“This day proves once again that Russia must be officially recognized as a terrorist state. (…) No other country in the world is allowed to destroy peaceful cities and ordinary human lives every day with cruise missiles and artillery,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr. Zelensky said Thursday night, noting that a medical center had been destroyed.
He said that three children under the age of ten were among the 23 dead, “and unfortunately it is not the final number” because “dozens of people are missing” and there are “very serious injuries”.
He again called for the creation of a special court, as well as a “compensation mechanism” and new sanctions against Moscow, believing that it was “time for the democratic world to enshrine all this in appropriate legal instruments.”
He had previously denounced that “Russia kills civilians, kills Ukrainian children, fires missiles at civilian targets where there is nothing military. What is this, if it is an openly terrorist act?”
“Barbarian Behavior”
The Russian Defense Ministry, quoted on Telegram by the editor-in-chief of the public media group Rossia Segodnya, Margarita Simonian, claimed to have targeted Vinnytsia “the Chamber of Officers, where the nationalists had been deployed.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “dismayed,” recalling that the organization condemns “any attack against civilians or civilian infrastructure,” according to his spokesman.
The EU criticized the “barbaric behavior” of Russia. “These atrocities in Vinnytsia are the latest in a long series of brutal attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and EU commissioner for conflict management said in a statement. Janez Lenarcic.
“There can be no impunity for the violations and crimes committed by the Russian forces and their political leaders,” they declared.
Source: BFM TV
