Air strikes kill 25, including 5 children

Russian strikes battered cities across Ukraine yesterday, killing 25 people, including five children, as Kyiv said preparations for a counter-offensive against Moscow’s forces were nearly complete.
The deadly new attacks included a strike on a residential block in the historic city of Uman in central Ukraine, where AFP journalists saw rescue workers extracting victims’ remains from destroyed buildings.
The barrage of almost two dozen missiles overnight ended a weeks-long pause following the repeated Russian strikes that had aimed to paralyse Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter months.
Yesterday evening, workers in Uman, the site of an annual Hasidic pilgrimage, pulled the body of another child from under the rubble.
Authorities said Russian cruise missiles killed 23 people – including four children – in Uman.
“I want to see my children, they are under the rubble,” Dmitry, a 33-year-old local from Luhansk, an eastern city under Russian control, said earlier.
Rescuers were using cranes to search for survivors among the remains of the multi-storey housing block in the central city of 80,000 inhabitants.
“I’ve seen a lot but I haven’t lost my children before. Now I want to see my children alive or dead,” Dmitry said.
A man wearing a face mask sobbed as he watched, and a woman came to comfort him.
“No one is left,” said Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, who survived inside a flat on the seventh floor.
He was rescued by firefighters from the balcony where he escaped with his wife after the explosion blocked their front door.
Lubivskyi wept as he looked up at the smouldering gaps in the building where adjacent flats had been blasted away.
“My neighbours are gone. No one is left,” he said. “Only the kitchens were left standing.”
Russian missiles also hit the central city of Dnipro, already grief-stricken after a January strike on a tower block that killed more than 40 people.
“A woman and a three-year-old child died,” the city’s mayor Borys Filatov said yesterday
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the latest barrage and vowed a response to “Russian terror”.
His adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak tweeted: “If you don’t want THIS spread around the world, then give us weapons. Lots of weapons. And add sanctions.”
Moscow said it had targeted reserve units of the Ukrainian military and that “all assigned objects were hit”.
There were no reported casualties in Kyiv, which was among the cities targeted yesterday.
The capital had not been hit by missiles in over 50 days, although last week it was attacked by 12 Iranian-made drones, eight of which were shot down.
Ukraine said overall it had downed 21 of 23 Russian missiles and two attack drones.
The country’s air defence system has been bolstered in recent months by the delivery of Western equipment crucial to the country’s war effort.
The new strikes came as Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said his country’s preparations to push back against entrenched Russian positions were almost complete.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) allies and partners have provided Ukraine with 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks to form units and help it retake territory from Russian forces, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.
“Equipment has been promised, prepared and partially delivered. In a global sense, we’re ready,” Reznikov said.
Kyiv has said throughout the war launched by Russia in February 2022 that it is intent on repelling Moscow’s forces from territory they control in eastern and southern Ukraine.
“Preparations are coming to an end,” Reznikov added of the planned offensive. “As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and the decision of the commanders – we will do it.”
Most of the fighting is focused on the eastern Donbas region, particularly the city of Bakhmut, which has been almost completely destroyed.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said yesterday that he had paid a rare visit to the embattled city and vowed Moscow would rebuild it.
“The city is damaged, but it can be restored. As soon as the operational situation allows, we will go in and work, step by step,” he said.
Moscow-installed officials in eastern Ukraine said that Ukrainian shelling had killed nine people including an eight-year-old girl in the city of Donetsk.
The war is coming to a crucial juncture after a months-long Russian winter offensive that gained little ground despite the bloodiest fighting so far
Ukraine made swift gains throughout the second half of 2022, but has kept its forces on the defensive for the past five months.
Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February last year, claiming that the Kyiv government posed a threat.
Ukraine and its Western allies call it an unprovoked war of conquest.