(Kyiv) Three people, including two minors, were killed and around thirty others injured by a Russian bombing on Wednesday on a residential building in Kharkiv, a large city in northeastern Ukraine, according to a new report published Thursday by the Ukrainian authorities.
Posted at 7:48 a.m.
Updated at 1:07 p.m.
The death toll “stands at three” as rescuers pulled out the bodies of a man and a 15-year-old boy from the rubble on Thursday, the attorney general’s office said.
The third victim is a 12-year-old child, regional governor Oleg Synegoubov said earlier.
“Thirty-five other people were injured in the attack,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
A guided aerial bomb, a powerful weapon widely used by Russia, hit a building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, on Wednesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained.
The rescuers’ work was complicated by a “threat of collapse” of the building, due to damage caused by the aerial bomb, according to Oleg Synegubov.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Igor Terekhov, clarified that the air attack had destroyed several floors.
PHOTO SERGEY BOBOK, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
At least 35 people were injured in the strike in Kharkiv and others may still be trapped under the rubble.
In videos circulating online, a gaping hole was visible on the facade of a tall building.
Other images, published by the national police, show a pile of debris mixing wall rubble, metal, clothing and furniture, at the scene of the attack.
Kharkiv, located less than 30 kilometers from the border with Russia in northeastern Ukraine, is very regularly the target of Russian fire.
Zelensky criticizes Western reactions
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the West’s “zero” reaction to the arrival of North Korean troops in Russia to fight Ukraine, in an interview with South Korean media published by his office on Thursday.
Kyiv and its Western partners accuse Pyongyang of having sent some 10,000 soldiers to Russia to engage against Ukraine, denouncing an “escalation” and “internationalization” of the conflict.
“I think the reaction on this subject is zero, it has been zero,” Mr. Zelensky said of his partners in this interview with the South Korean channel KBS, in which he also said “surprised by China’s silence” on this deployment.
During this interview, the Ukrainian president estimated that President Vladimir Putin “is testing the reaction of the West, the reaction of NATO and the reaction of South Korea” by engaging this first group of North Korean soldiers on the Ukrainian front.
And if Western reaction remains non-existent, “then the number of North Korean troops on our borders will increase”.
He compared the Western response to the arrival of these soldiers to that which followed the “occupation of Crimea”, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, after which there had been no “strong measures” of the West, according to him.
Russia claims capture of village in southern Donbass
The Russian army, whose progress in eastern Ukraine accelerated in October, claimed Thursday the capture of a new village in Donbass, an area that President Vladimir Putin considers his “priority”.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced in a statement that its troops had “liberated” the village of Yasna Polyana, located in the Donetsk region which is part of Donbass.
Iasna Polyana is located about twenty kilometers northwest of the town of Vougledar, which recently fell into the hands of the Russian army.
Another town, Kourakhové, is approximately the same distance away. Russian forces are now at its gates and advancing to the north, east and south of this industrial city.
The Russian army has advanced 478 km² into Ukrainian territory since the beginning of October, its largest territorial gain over a month since March 2022 and the first weeks of the war, according to an AFP analysis on Monday. based on data from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Two thirds of these Russian advances, or 324 km2were carried out in the Donetsk region.
Experts note an acceleration in the Russian advance, without however a real collapse.
However, the Ukrainian forces are struggling, fewer in number and less well armed than the Russian soldiers.
Fears are particularly concentrated around the town of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub for the Ukrainian army in the Donetsk region. Russian troops are approximately 6 km from this urban center.
The future deployment of North Korean troops to support the Russian war effort, announced by Ukraine and the West, reinforces concerns.
According to Washington and Seoul, some 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia.
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassili Nebenzia, on Wednesday brushed aside “simple assertions” without “convincing evidence”.
President Vladimir Putin did not deny it when he was questioned on this subject last week.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrsky, said Thursday that he discussed the “intense fighting” in a telephone conversation with American general Christopher Cavoli.
“The enemy, using its numerical superiority in personnel and equipment, is continuing intensive assault operations in several areas,” he added, pleading for increased American military support.
