Kyiv:

Russia came under fire at the UN Security Council on Tuesday for conducting “systemic attacks” on Ukraine’s medical facilities after a wave of deadly strikes across the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said 38 people across Ukraine were killed — including four children — and 190 wounded in the wave of nearly 40 missiles that targeted several towns and cities on Monday, damaging medical facilities.

“Intentionally directing attacks against a protected hospital is a war crime and perpetrators must be held to account,” Joyce Msuya, acting under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, told the emergency meeting.

“These incidents are part of a deeply concerning pattern of systemic attacks harming healthcare and other civilian infrastructure across Ukraine,” Msuya added.

Kyiv said a children’s hospital was struck by a Russian cruise missile with components produced in NATO member countries, and announced a day of mourning in the capital.

“First Responders attending the scene immediately after the attack found children receiving treatment for cancer in hospital beds, set up in parks and on the street, where medical workers had quickly established triage areas,” Msuya said.

Ukrainian ally France’s envoy Nicolas de Riviere said “Russia has deliberately targeted residential neighborhoods and healthcare infrastructure.” 

“France condemns these flagrant violations of international law, which are yet another entry and note list of war crimes for which Russia will be held accountable,” he said.

‘Abominable’ attacks

China, which has long called for a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine, said that both sides should “show political will, meet each other halfway and start peace talks at an early date.”

“China will continue to actively promote peace talks,” said Beijing’s envoy Fu Cong.

Russia previously claimed the extensive missile damage in Kyiv was caused by Ukrainian air defense systems.

“We continue to insist that we do not strike civilian targets,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a daily briefing Tuesday.

However, the United Nations said there was a “high likelihood” that the children’s hospital in Kyiv suffered “a direct hit” from a missile “launched by the Russian Federation.”

Russia currently holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council and its envoy to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, indicated earlier this month he will take a firm line with Ukraine and its Western allies.

As a permanent member of the UN’s top security body, Moscow wields a veto which it has used on several occasions to thwart efforts to censure its war in Ukraine.

It initially appeared that Russia would seek to block Ukraine from participating in Tuesday’s meeting after Nebenzya said Kyiv had not correctly formatted its letter requesting to participate.

Ukraine could participate “only on condition it was requested by the United States… we regret that Ukraine cannot act independently… (and) it has to be led by its sponsor,” said Nebenzya.

“Mr President, we are appalled by the strikes on Ukraine by the country that you are representing,” Slovenia’s representative to the UN Samuel Zbogar said to Nebenzya, calling the strikes “brutal” and “another low.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the deadly Russian strikes in Ukraine as “particularly shocking,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday.

UN rights chief Volker Turk echoed Guterres, calling the attacks “abominable,” and saying that “the strikes severely damaged the intensive care, surgical and oncology wards of Okhmatdyt, which is Ukraine’s largest children’s referral hospital.”

Zelensky has been urging allies to bolster Ukrainian air defense systems and was expected to renew those calls as a NATO summit kicked off later Tuesday in Washington.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Firefighters work at a site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine on May 10, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russian forces began a renewed ground assault in Ukraine’s northeast, killing and injuring several people and forcing more than 1,700 civilians to evacuate from the Kharkiv region, officials said on May 11.

Artillery, mortar, and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 different towns and villages, leaving at least three people dead and five others injured, said Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.

Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the Kharkiv region on May 10 to hold off a Russian attempt to breach local defenses, authorities said.

Ukrainian forces also launched a barrage of drones and missiles on May 11 night, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said, with air defense systems downing 21 rockets and 16 drones over Russia’s Belgorod, Kursk and Volgograd regions. One person died in a drone strike in the Belgorod region, and another in the Kursk region, local officials said.

Another strike set ablaze an oil depot in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Luhansk region, killing three people and injuring eight more, Leonid Pasechnik, the region’s Moscow-installed leader said on the messaging app Telegram on May 11.

Russian forces stepped up their bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in late March. May 10’s attack signaled a tactical switch in the war by Moscow that Ukrainian officials had been expecting for weeks.

Russian military bloggers said the assault could mark the start of a Russian attempt to carve out a “buffer zone” that President Vladimir Putin vowed to create earlier this year to halt frequent Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on May 10 evening that Russian forces were expanding their operations. He also called on the country’s Western allies to ensure that promised deliveries of military aid would swiftly reach the front lines.

“It is critical that partners support our warriors and Ukrainian resilience with timely deliveries. Truly timely ones,” he said in a video statement on X. “A package that truly helps is the actual delivery of weapons to Ukraine, rather than just the announcement of a package.”

The Kremlin’s forces have repeatedly sought to exploit Ukraine’s shortages of ammunition and personnel as the flow of Western military aid to Kyiv has tapered off in recent months, with promised new support still yet to arrive.

Ukraine previously said it was aware that Russia was assembling thousands of troops along the northeastern border, close to the Kharkiv and Sumy regions. Intelligence officials also said they had expected an attack there though Russia’s most recent ground offensive had been focused on parts of eastern Ukraine farther south.

While Russia’s gains in the region have so far been limited, analysts at the U.S. think tank Institute of the Study of War described them Friday as “tactically significant.”

They said Russia had only “committed relatively limited manpower to their initial assaults” but that the offensive in Kharkiv “is meant to … (draw) Ukrainian manpower and materiel from other critical sectors of the front in eastern Ukraine.”

The Russian military could also try to cut key supply routes and try to blockade Kharkiv, home to roughly 1.1 million people and only about 30 km south of the border.

In the war’s early days, Russia made a botched attempt to quickly storm Kharkiv but retreated from its outskirts after about a month. In the fall of 2022, seven months later, Ukraine’s army pushed them out of Kharkiv. The bold counterattack helped persuade Western countries that Ukraine could defeat Russia on the battlefield and merited military support.

Kyiv:

Ukrainian officials said Thursday that a Russian strike on a grocery store and cafe in the eastern region of Kharkiv had killed dozens of people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike had slammed into the Kupiansk district of the war-battered region bordering Russia, where Moscow’s forces have been pushing to recapture territory they lost last year to Ukrainian troops.

“The brutal Russian crime of hitting an ordinary grocery store with a rocket is a completely deliberate terrorist attack,” Zelensky said in a statement on social media.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general said at least 49 people were killed.

Zelensky posted an image of a woman kneeling over the body of someone apparently killed in the strike, with other corpses strewn around her, while rescue workers worked nearby.

The head of the Kharkiv region Oleg Sinegubov said the strike hit a cafe and shop around 1:15 pm (1015 GMT) in the village of Groza.

The village is 30 kilometres (around 20 miles) west of Kupiansk, a frontline town, and is estimated to have had a pre-war population of around 500 people.

“Rescuers are working on the scene,” he said, adding that a 6-year-old boy was among the dead. One child had been injured, he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)