Russian missiles ripped through an apartment complex in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 15 people and leaving dozens buried in the rubble, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
The Saturday evening airstrike in the town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region involved “two or three Russian rockets,” according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the regional military administration. Ukrainian emergency services officials said that 24 people, including a child, “may still be under the rubble” after six people were pulled out alive. The strike on the residential structure comes as Russian forces shift their attention to the southern province of the Donbas region after capturing the Luhansk province earlier this month.
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“I have been receiving reports all day long today from the city of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday. “A rescue operation is underway there after a Russian strike at residential buildings. Two high-rise buildings were destroyed. Dozens of people are under the rubble. Six were saved. There are 15 names in the list of the dead, and unfortunately, this is not the final number.”
The Ukrainian leader added that a Russian “missile strike” caused the blast, and he vowed that the “killers” responsible for ordering the attack “will all be found.”
Survivors described a chaotic scene as they desperately tried to get to safety during the Russian bombardment.
“I was thrown into the bathroom. It was all chaos. I was in shock, all covered in blood,” a woman named Venera told Reuters, saying that she tried to save her pet kittens during the airstrike. “By the time I left the bathroom, the room was full of rubble, three floors fell down. I never found the kittens under the rubble.”
Several towns in Ukraine’s Donetsk region have been under heavy fire in recent days.
Russian forces attacked the town of Slovyansk but withdrew after facing stiff Ukrainian resistance, according to the Ukrainian military.
Russian troops were gathering near the town of Bilohorivka, 30 miles east of Slovyansk, according to Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that Russian forces destroyed hangars near the town of Kostyantynivka holding M777 howitzers supplied by the United States.
Zelensky said Sunday the Ukrainian army is “holding on firmly, repelling attacks in various directions,” and that he’s not seeing any signs of an “operational pause” by Russian forces.
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“Thirty-four airstrikes by Russian aircraft over the past day is an answer to all those who came up with this ‘pause,'” Zelensky said.
He added, “A lot still needs to be done so that Russian losses really cause such pause.”
