Missiles and drones hit civilian buildings in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president released video Wednesday showing what he said was a Russian missile hitting an apartment building in the city, hours after Kremlin forces launched explosive-laden drones that killed at least four people at a student dormitory near Kiev before dawn. . .

The video posted on Telegram by President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to be closed-circuit television footage that captured the moment a missile hit the nine-storey apartment building on a busy road in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia.

Ukrainian media published pictures showing charred apartments on several floors of the damaged buildings, with flames rising from some of them. Anatoly Kurtiev, secretary of the Zaporizhia City Council, said two children were among the 18 people injured. Local officials said 11 people were taken to hospital after the apartment attack, four of them in critical condition.

“Russia is brutally, brutally bombing the city,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram along with the video. “Residential areas where ordinary people and children live are being shot.”

He appealed to countries to step up pressure on the Kremlin to abandon its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia denied targeting residential areas, although artillery and rocket shelling hit residential buildings and civilian infrastructure on a daily basis

Earlier Wednesday, a nighttime drone attack partially destroyed a high school and two dormitories in the city of Rzhev, south of the Ukrainian capital, local officials said. It was not clear how many people were in the dormitories at that time.

The body of a 40-year-old man was recovered from the rubble on the fifth floor of the dormitory, according to regional police chief Andrei Nepetov. Neptov said more than 20 people were taken to hospital.

Just hours earlier, the Japanese prime minister left the Ukrainian capital after showing support for the country.

On the same day, Chinese leader Xi Jinping left Moscow After discussing his proposal to end the warwhich the West rejected as a start.

Wednesday’s barrage continued Russia’s relentless bombardment as the war largely stalemated during the winter months.

The Zaporizhia regional administration said two missiles hit the apartment building, saying Russia’s goal was to “frighten the civilian population of the city of thousands”.

“It’s hell in Zaporizhia,” Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko wrote on Telegram, adding, “There aren’t any military facilities nearby.”

However, Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Moscow-appointed regional administration for the Russian-occupied part of the Zaporizhia region, claimed that the building was hit by a Ukrainian air defense missile launched to intercept a Russian missile.

He did not cite any evidence to support his claim.

Russian officials have blamed Ukrainian air defenses for some of the deadliest attacks on residential buildings in the past, saying the deployment of air defense systems in residential areas puts civilians at risk.

The Ukrainian General Staff said that the Ukrainian air defenses shot down 16 of the 21 drones launched by Russia. The city’s military administration reported that eight of them dropped bullets near the capital. Other drone strikes hit the Khmelnytskyi region in the center-west of the country.

Drone barrages and other Russian attacks hitting civilian infrastructure have drawn a harsh response from President Volodymyr Zelensky, a day after Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed China’s proposals to negotiate an end to the war.

“More than 20 deadly Iranian drones, plus missiles, many bombing occasions, and this is just in one of the last nights of Russian terror,” Zelensky wrote in English on Twitter.

He wrote: “Every time someone tries to hear the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, another order is given there with such criminal blows.”

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the current president of the Group of Seven nations, made a surprise visit to Kiev on Tuesday, throwing his support for Zelensky’s government as his Asian rival Xi sided with Putin.

After returning to Poland on Wednesday morning, Kishida said he had expressed Japan’s and G7’s “unwavering solidarity” towards Ukraine during his talks with Zelensky.

The Japanese government’s chief spokesperson said Wednesday that Kishida’s visit to Ukraine was “of great significance” for Japan’s future support to that country.

“Through Prime Minister Kishida’s visit to Ukraine, Japan was able to show not only other members of the G7 but also the international community including the countries of the Global South its determination to stand up for the rules-based international community,” Hirokazu Matsuno said.

Kishida’s visit snatched some of the attention from Xi’s trip to Moscow where he promoted Beijing’s peace proposal for Ukraine, which has already been rejected by Western countries as a way to consolidate Moscow’s gains. Xi left Moscow early Wednesday.

The visits by Xi and Kishida, which are 800 kilometers (500 miles) apart, highlighted how the countries lined up behind Moscow or Kiev during the nearly 13-month war.

In a joint statement, Russia and China stressed the need to “respect the legitimate security concerns of all countries” to settle the conflict, echoing Moscow’s argument that it has sent troops to prevent the United States and its NATO allies from turning the country into an anti-Russian fortress state.

By contrast, Kishida called the Russian invasion “a disgrace that undermines the foundations of the international legal order” and vowed to “continue to support Ukraine until peace is restored to the beautiful Ukrainian lands”.

Ukraine’s Finance Ministry said on Wednesday that it had agreed with the International Monetary Fund a $15.6 billion loan package aimed at shoring up Kiev’s finances. The Russian invasion crippled the economy, and Ukrainian officials hope the IMF deal will encourage their allies to provide financial support as well.

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Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine