Russian missile strikes Ukrainian apartment building, killing 1 and injuring dozens

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing one and wounding 25 others, including two children, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.

“Russia is shelling the city with bestial savagery,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement accompanying a purported video of the attack he posted to Telegram. “Residential areas where ordinary people and children live are being fired at.”

The video — which looks like it was captured by CCTV cameras — shows a missile hitting the nine-story residential building. Flames leaped from torched apartments on several different stories, according to Ukrainian media.

“One of the missiles hit between two high-rise buildings, partially destroying apartments and balconies, damaging roofs and breaking windows,” said the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, according to CNN. “The blast wave and debris also damaged other nearby residential buildings, cars and other civilian infrastructure in the city.” 

Three of the more than two dozen injured remained in critical condition, Zaporizhzhia City Council Secretary Anatolii Kurtiev said.

Another Wednesday attack — this time by exploding Russian drones — killed seven people and demolished part of a high school and two dormitories in Rzhyshchiv, a city about an hour and a half south of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

More than 20 others were hospitalized with injuries, regional police said.

On Twitter, Zelensky decried what he called a “night of Russian terror.”

“Every time someone tries to hear the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, another order is given there for such criminal strikes,” the Ukrainian president wrote.

Russia has denied targeting civilians, even though it regularly hits apartments and infrastructure with artillery and missiles.

A Russian official claimed the Zaporizhzhia apartment building was actually hit by a Ukrainian air defense missile. But he offered no evidence to support his statement.

The attacks happened just hours after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida left Kyiv after showing support for the Ukrainian cause — and the same day Chinese President Xi Jinping left Moscow after outlining a 12-point peace plan that China claims would end the war.

With Post wires