Ukraine has launched a large-scale long-range drone attack targeting several regions in Russia including the huge Ryazan oil refinery, after three days of massive strikes by Moscow against Ukraine.
Kyiv’s attack on Friday followed a series of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, including on the capital, Kyiv, where a cruise missile hit an apartment block on Thursday, killing 24 people including three children.
The final death toll in Kyiv emerged as emergency teams finished digging through the rubble of a nine-storey block which was hit in what the Ukrainian air force said was Russia’s biggest barrage of the country since it launched its all-out invasion in February 2022.
As Ukraine announced a national day of mourning, the Council of Europe said on Friday, during a summit of 46 European foreign ministers in Moldova, that it was moving towards setting up a war crimes court to try Russia’s leadership for its war of aggression against Ukraine.
“Action now needs to be taken to follow up on this political commitment by securing the tribunal’s functioning and funding,” said Alain Berset, the secretary general of the Council of Europe.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, visiting the site of the destroyed apartment block in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River, placed flowers and spoke to rescue workers.
“Our first responders … worked non-stop for more than a day,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram app.
“The Russians practically levelled an entire section of the building with their missile,” he said. Zelenskyy has said that, according to initial analysis, the weapon that struck the building was a recently manufactured Russian Kh-101 missile.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles in attacks across Ukraine this week over three consecutive days, Ukrainian officials said.
“A Russia like this can never be normalised, a Russia that deliberately destroys lives and hopes to remain unpunished. Pressure is needed,” Zelenskyy said, reiterating appeals to allies to help Ukraine strengthen its air defences.
City officials in Kyiv said 24 bodies had been recovered from the rubble and about 30 people had been rescued alive. Nearly 50 people were wounded, and about 400 people required psychological support, the interior ministry said.
Russia did not immediately comment on the strike on the apartment building. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians but during more than four years of war it has frequently hit residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure in airstrikes across Ukraine.
Russian authorities said four people, including a child, had been hit in the Ukrainian strikes. Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened a terrorism investigation after the strikes, saying they had targeted “residential and civilian infrastructure”.
“Two residential multi-storey buildings and an industrial facility were damaged,” it said.
Witnesses suggested the target of the strikes in Ryazan appeared to be the oil refinery, one of Russia’s largest, which was engulfed in a large blaze after being hit by several impacts.
Kyiv officials announced a day of mourning on Friday to honour the victims, with national flags at half-mast across the city of 3 million people. All entertainment events were cancelled or postponed.
The interior ministry said the search-and-rescue operation at the apartment building lasted more than 28 hours and hundreds of rescuers sifted through 3,000 cubic metres of rubble.