Officials said Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea hit a medical center, shops and residential buildings in Vinnytsia, a city 268 kilometers (167 miles) southwest of the capital, Kyiv. The governor of Vinnytsia region, Serhiy Borzov, said Ukrainian air defense shot down two of the four incoming Russian missiles. National Police Chief Ihor Klymenko said only six bodies have been found so far, while 39 people are still missing. Among the dead are three children under the age of 10. Of the 66 people hospitalized, five remained in critical condition while 34 were seriously injured, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine announced. “It was a medical organization building. When the first rocket hit it, glass fell from my windows,” said Svitlana Kumbas, 74, a resident of Vinnytsia. “And when the second wave came, it was so deafening that my head is still buzzing. He tore the outermost door, he tore it right through the holes.’ Along with hitting buildings, the rockets ignited a fire that spread to 50 cars in a parking lot, officials said. “These are fairly high precision missiles. … They knew where they were hitting,” Borzhov told the AP. Russia has denied targeting civilians. “Russia is only hitting military targets in Ukraine. The strike in Vinnytsia targeted an officers’ residence, where preparations of the Ukrainian armed forces were underway,” Evgeny Varganov, a member of Russia’s permanent mission to the UN, said in a speech at the chamber. Among the buildings damaged in the strike was the House of Officers, a Soviet-era concert hall. Margarita Simonyan, head of state-controlled Russian television network RT, told the messaging app’s channel that military officials told her a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian “Nazis.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of deliberately targeting missiles at civilians and repeated his call for Russia to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism. The strike came as government officials from about 40 countries met in The Hague, Netherlands, to discuss coordinating investigations and prosecutions of possible war crimes committed in Ukraine. “No other country in the world represents such a terrorist threat as Russia,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “No other country in the world allows itself daily to use cruise missiles and rocket artillery to destroy cities and ordinary human life.” He called for the creation of a mechanism to confiscate Russian assets around the world and use them to compensate victims of “Russian terrorism.” Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denis Monastirsky echoed Zelensky, calling the missile attack a “war crime” intended to intimidate Ukrainians while the country’s forces hold out in the east. He said several dozen people were detained for questioning on suspicion that Russian forces had received targeted assistance from someone on the ground. The US Embassy in Kyiv issued a security alert late Thursday, calling on all US citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave immediately. The alert, which appeared to be in response to the Vinnytsia attack, claimed that large gatherings and organized events “may serve as Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including its western regions.” Vinnytsia is one of the largest cities in Ukraine, with a population of 370,000 before the war. Thousands of people from eastern Ukraine, where Russia has focused its offensive, have fled there since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Katerina Popova said she saw many injured people lying on the street after the rockets hit. Popova had left Kharkiv in March seeking safety in “quiet” Vinnytsia. But the missile attack changed all that. “We didn’t expect this. Now we feel like we don’t have a home again,” he said. Borzhov said 36 apartment buildings had been damaged and residents had been evacuated, and a 24-hour hotline had been set up for information about the injured or missing. July 14 will be declared a day of mourning, he said. Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the attack mirrored previous ones in residential areas that Moscow has launched “to try to pressure Kyiv into making some concessions.” “Russia used the same tactics when it hit the Odesa region, Kremenchuk, Chasiv Yar and other areas,” Zhdanov said. “The Kremlin wants to show that it will continue to use unconventional methods of warfare and kill civilians in defiance of Kiev and the entire international community.” Before the missiles hit Vinnytsia, the president’s office reported the death of five civilians and the wounding of eight others in Russian attacks over the past day. One person was injured when a rocket damaged several buildings in the southern city of Mykolaiv early Thursday. A rocket attack on Wednesday killed at least five people in the city. Russian forces also continued artillery and missile attacks in eastern Ukraine, mainly in the Donetsk region after overtaking the adjacent Luhansk region. The town of Lysychansk, the last major stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, fell to Russian forces earlier this month. Luhansk and Donetsk together make up the Donbass, a predominantly Russian-speaking region of steel, mining and other industries that fueled Ukraine’s economy. Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, meanwhile, urged residents to leave “as quickly as possible”. “We urge citizens to leave the area, where electricity, water and natural gas are in short supply following the Russian shelling,” Kirilenko said in televised comments. “The fighting is intensifying and people should stop risking their lives and leave the area.” On the battlefront, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are seeking to replenish their depleted supplies of unmanned aerial vehicles to pinpoint enemy positions and guide artillery strikes. Both sides are trying to acquire advanced jam-resistant drones that could provide a decisive advantage in battle. Ukrainian officials say the demand for such technology is “huge” as crowdfunding efforts are underway to raise the necessary cash. In other developments: — Russian-settled officials in southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region announced plans to hold a referendum in early September on the region’s incorporation into Russia. Large parts of Zaporizhzhia are now under Russian control, as is most of neighboring Kherson. Kremlin-backed administrations in both regions have declared their intentions to become part of Russia. The separatist leaders of the self-proclaimed “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk have also announced similar plans. — The speaker of Russia’s parliament visited separatist-held areas in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, hours after Kremlin officials in the country’s south announced they would hold a referendum on joining Russia. According to Russian news agencies, Vyacheslav Volodin spoke about the need to harmonize legislation between Russia and the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in his speech to the region’s self-proclaimed legislative assembly. He said Moscow and the separatists must “create a single legal field” in the areas of health care, education, public services and social protection. — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed into law a bill barring the release of information about Russian companies and individuals who may face international sanctions. The law expressly prohibits the publication on the Internet or in the media — without written permission — of any information about transactions carried out or planned by Russian natural or legal persons engaged in foreign economic activity. It also suspends for three years the mandatory publication of key financial and governance information by large Russian state-owned companies.
Maria Grazia Murru reported from Kyiv.
Follow AP’s coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at
