Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia kills 13 people following bridge attack
"My house destroyed": John Ray speaks to victims injured from the Russian strike
A Russian strike on an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens more, officials said on Sunday.
The blasts in the city, which sits in a region Moscow has claimed as its own, blew out windows in adjacent buildings and left at least one high-rise apartment building partially collapsed.
Over 20 missiles were fired on residential areas in Zaporizhzhia by Russian forces, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement about the attack.
At least 60 have been injured, including six children, Kuleba added.
The update revises a previous statement that said that 17 people had been killed.
The multiple strikes came a day after an explosion hit a key bridge linking Crimea with Russia causing it to partially collapse.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the security on the bridge to be tightened late on Saturday. He put Russia's federal security service, the FSB, in charge of the effort.
The blast damaged an important supply artery for the Kremlin's faltering war effort in southern Ukraine and hit a towering symbol of Russian power in the region.
The rockets that pounded Zaporizhzhia overnight damaged at least 20 private homes and 50 apartment buildings, city council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said. At least 40 people were hospitalized, Kurtev said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian military confirmed the attack, saying there were dozens of casualties.
Residents gathered behind police tape by a building where several floors collapsed from the blast, leaving a smoldering chasm at least 40-feet wide where apartments once stood.
Tetyana Lazun’ko, 73, and her husband, Oleksii, took shelter in the hallway of their top floor apartment after hearing sirens, warning of an attack. They were spared the worst of the blast that left them in fear and disbelief.
“There was an explosion. Everything was shaking,” Lazun’ko said. “Everything was flying and I was screaming.”
A woman being rescued from the rubble from one of the shelled buildings in Zaporizhzhia
Shards of glass, entire window and door frames and other debris covered the exterior floors of the apartment where they’d lived since 1974. Lazun’ko wept inconsolably, wondering why their home in an area with no military infrastructure in sight was targeted.
“Why are they bombing us. Why?” she said.
Oleksii, who sat quietly, leaning on a wooden cane, has suffered three strokes, Lazun’ko said. Breaking his silence, he said slowly, “This is international terrorism. You can’t be saved from it.”
In recent weeks, Russia has repeatedly struck Zaporizhzhia, which is the capital of a region of the same name that Putin annexed in violation of international law last week.
At least 19 people died in Russian missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city on Thursday.
“Again, Zaporizhzhia. Again, merciless attacks on civilians, targeting residential buildings, in the middle of the night,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post.
“Absolute meanness. Absolute evil. … From the one who gave this order, to everyone who carried out this order: they will answer. They must. Before the law and the people,” he added.
The attack on the Crimea bridge was a significant blow to Russia, which illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. The speaker of the Russian-backed regional parliament in Crimea accused Ukraine for the explosion, but Moscow didn’t apportion blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge, and some lauded the destruction on Saturday, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The explosion, which Russian authorities said was caused by a truck bomb, risked a sharp escalation in Russia’s eight-month war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation," shedding the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of fighting to ordinary Russians.
Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen Sergei Surovikin, would now command all Russian troops in Ukraine.
Surovikin, who this summer was placed in charge of troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a bombardment that destroyed much of Aleppo.
Moscow, however, continues to suffer battlefield losses.
On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week. Kirill Stremousov told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children and the elderly could be relocated because Kherson was getting "ready for a difficult period."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video address, indirectly acknowledged the bridge attack but did not address its cause.
“Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state’s territory,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm.”
Zelenskyy said Ukraine wants a future “without occupiers. Throughout our territory, in particular in Crimea.”
Train and car traffic over the bridge was temporarily suspended on Saturday, although car traffic resumed on Saturday afternoon on one of the two links that remained intact, with the flow alternating in each direction, said Crimea’s Russia-backed leader, Sergey Aksyonov.
The Russian transport ministry said on Telegram Sunday that passenger train traffic between Crimea and the Russian mainland resumed overnight “according to schedule.”
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