SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Andrew E. Kramer
Kyiv: Russia bombarded Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones that killed one person and wounded at least seven others at the weekend, the latest in a series of deadly attacks that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said makes clear Moscow has little real interest in ceasefire negotiations.
While Russian drone and missile attacks have been unrelenting throughout more than three years of war, they have intensified in recent weeks amid ongoing peace talks led by the Trump administration.
Ukrainian authorities said the barrage on Sunday (Kyiv time) killed one man, damaged buildings and started fires in three areas of the capital. Damage and injuries were also reported elsewhere in Ukraine, as the country declared a day of mourning for a deadly strike on Friday in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Flowers and toys were left on a swing to commemorate victims killed in Russia’s missile attack on a residential area in Kryvyi Rih.Credit: AP
A missile strike on a residential area there killed 19 people, including nine children, and wounded 74 others. It damaged the courtyard of an apartment block, and emergency medical workers found some of the wounded in a playground, videos released by Ukraine’s emergency services showed. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said the missile hit a gathering of Ukrainian and foreign military personnel.
But a United Nations team that visited the site said, citing witnesses, that a meeting of beauticians, not military personnel, had been under way at a nearby restaurant when the missile struck.
Most of the children died while playing in a park, the UN said in a statement by high commissioner for human rights Volker Turk. It was the deadliest single strike for children of the war, said Turk, who called the attack with a cluster munition warhead “an unimaginable horror”.
Though he has expressed support for the Trump administration’s efforts to secure a ceasefire, Zelensky was critical of the tepid US response to the attack on Kryvyi Rih, his home town.
He said he was “unpleasantly surprised” by a social media post from the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, that expressed horror over the strike but did not directly condemn Russia.
And in his nightly address on Saturday, he said he was “thankful to every country whose representatives have spoken out” about the strike, and – although he did not single out the US – emphasised that silence would embolden Moscow to “continue the war and keep ignoring diplomacy”.
“We must all remember: the war continues,” Zelensky added.
Rescue workers in Kryvyi Rih after Russia’s strike.Credit: AP
Ukrainian officials have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of playing for time in ceasefire negotiations mediated by the Trump administration.
After the attack on Kyiv, Zelensky said in a post on social platform X: “The pressure on Russia is still insufficient, and the daily Russian strikes on Ukraine prove it.” He added, “these attacks are Putin’s response to all international diplomatic efforts”.
While Ukraine agreed last month to accept an unconditional 30-day halt in the fighting, Russia did not. Both sides have agreed in principle to halt strikes against energy infrastructure temporarily, only to accuse each other of violating the agreement. Kyiv and Moscow also considered a ceasefire on the Black Sea last month in separate US-mediated talks but are still negotiating whether or how it will come into force. Russia asked for an easing of sanctions in exchange.
In the meantime, a Russian frigate and a Russian submarine in the Black Sea launched some of the cruise missiles fired on Sunday, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s navy, Dmytro Pletenchuk, said.
Emergency services personnel clear up rubble from a damaged office building following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv.Credit: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP
Among a small crowd standing outside the police perimeter at one missile strike site in Kyiv, the scene of smoldering, collapsed concrete fuelled anger at Russia, as attacks have throughout the war, but also at what was seen as hapless American mediation.
“The negotiations are taking place in one reality, and the war is going on in another reality in which we live,” said Maria Savchenko, whose family-owned business printing advertising posters was obliterated in the strike.
“The president of the United States doesn’t really want to understand what is happening here,” she said. Russia, she said, intended to carry on fighting.
Ukrainian officials say that, as the talks continue, Russia has shifted tactics in the missile and drone war by increasing the overall number of exploding drones and singling out certain cities for intense bombardments on some nights, rather than scattering attacks around the country.
The Ukrainian air force said on March 30 that 4133 drones and missiles were fired that month, an increase from earlier months.
In Sunday’s attack, the air force said, Russia launched a mix of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.
In Kyiv, the aerial assault began with exploding drones. Missiles then followed, setting off air-raid alarms through the night and early morning.
Valentyn Maidaniuk, a Kyiv resident, said he saw explosions flashing in the sky and heard buzzing from the drones’ engines as he walked to an air-raid shelter early on Sunday. In the end, he said, “I didn’t manage to sleep at all.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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