A Russian rocket attack hits an apartement building in the Ukraine….
At least 30 people DOA and 75 injured….
Anybody think the Ukraine is gonna just gonna quit this fight with Russia?
The strike on the apartment building is one of a series of devastating large-scale attacks on residential areas of Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February. Russian strikes on targets such as train stations, theaters, shopping malls and residential neighborhoods have led to significant loss of civilian life, while the shelling of cities and towns near the front line has also caused a mounting civilian death toll.
Under international law, it is a war crime to deliberately or recklessly attack civilian populations and places where civilians would be likely to congregate.
The State of the War
- Soledar: The Russian military and the Wagner Group, a private mercenary group, contradicted each other publicly about who should get credit for capturing the eastern town. Ukraine’s military, meanwhile, has rejected Russia’s victory claim, saying its troops were still fighting there.
- Russia’s Military Reshuffle: Moscow has shaken up its military command in Ukraine again, demoting its top commander after just three months and replacing him with a Kremlin insider who helped orchestrate the ill-fated invasion.
- Western Escalation: A cease-fire proposal seemingly aimed at splintering Western unity has instead been met with an escalation of military involvement by Ukraine’s allies.
- New Equipment: The Western allies’ provision to Ukraine of infantry fighting vehicles signaled their support for new offensives. Now it looks likely that tanks will be added to the list of weapons being sent.
More than 550 people were involved in the rescue operation as it passed the 24-hour mark, local officials said.
On Sunday morning, five victims who had been pulled from the rubble in Dnipro were laid out in body bags in a small grassy area next to the destroyed building. A light dusting of snow began to accumulate on them as the hours went by and recovery efforts continued.
At least 400 people lived in the large apartment building and the immediate area around it, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, and 72 apartments were destroyed in the attack. The explosion also shattered the windows of surrounding buildings, leaving many more people displaced.
In the late afternoon, firefighters were continuing to search the rubble for survivors. The air was filled with the sounds of cranes and crunching glass….
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Kyiv renewed its calls for more advanced Western air defense systems after the strike, which Ukrainian officials said Russia carried out with a long-range missile that Ukraine’s military was not “capable of shooting down.” Ukraine’s armed forces said defensive weapons such as the Patriot missile system that the Pentagon is preparing to send could have been capable of intercepting such an attack.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- At least one person in Dnipro was rescued alive Sunday, and another body was recovered. A digging machine hacked at the rubble in an attempt to access the collapsed apartments below. A worker on a cherry picker leaned into the fourth-floor balcony, ripping away debris with a shovel as he tried to get to the unit inside. The fate of more than 30 people was unknown, Zelensky said Sunday evening, though six children had been rescued.
- At least 73 people, including 13 children, were wounded, Zelensky said. Authorities will seek to resettle hundreds of residents after 72 apartments were destroyed and 164 damaged, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said on Telegram.
- The attack was the worst in Dnipro since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and occurred just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed his most senior military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, to oversee the war effort.
- There were Russian missile attacks elsewhere across the country, damaging critical and civilian infrastructure from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson in the south, officials there said. A thermal power station was damaged, deepening Ukraine’s electricity deficit and forcing authorities to tighten restrictions on electricity use, transmission system operator Ukrenergo said.
- Russia and Ukraine disputed control of the eastern salt mining town of Soledar, a gateway to the city of Bakhmut that has become a recent focus of the fighting. Moscow claimed to have seized the town, but Ukraine’s 46th Air Assault Brigade said Sunday that Ukrainian soldiers were still fighting there.
- Three Russian service members were killed and about 15 injured after a grenade blew up ammunition at a farm in the Belgorod region overnight, Russian state news service Tass reported, citing local emergency services. Eight servicemen were missing after the explosion, according to the emergency services. Official reports gave little detail about the circumstances of the explosion, and Telegram channels connected to Russian law enforcement attributed it to a serviceman detonating a hand grenade, starting a fire that led to the explosion of the ammunition. The Washington Post could not independently verify these reports.
- Russian officials may be seeking to augment the forces available for the war in Ukraine by raising the maximum age of military conscription, Britain’s Defense Ministry said. It cited a proposal by Russian lawmaker Andrey Kartapolov to raise the upper age limit from 27 to 30 “in time for the Spring 2023 draft.” Putin backed a proposal last month to change the ages of conscription from between 18 and 27, to 21 and 30. But Kartapolov’s proposal said that the minimum age would only be raised following a one- to three-year “transition period,” Reuters reported — which suggests that Russians between 18 and 30 could be called up in the meantime.
- Western allies are preparing to send more advanced military equipment to Ukraine. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Zelensky in a phone call Saturday that the United Kingdom would provide Challenger 2 tanks, along with additional artillery systems, following a pledge by the United States, Germany and France to send advanced infantry fighting vehicles. Ukrainian forces have been using Soviet-era tanks…