A Russian missile strikes the Ukrainian president’s home city as it mourns deaths in earlier attack

Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian missile slammed into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city on Wednesday, local authorities said, just as Kryvyi Rih was observing an official day of mourning for an attack the previous day that killed four civilians at a hotel.

The latest attack on the city struck civilian infrastructure, wounding eight people, local administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said on social media.

Tuesday’s attack, which also wounded five people, was part of a barrage of dozens of missiles and drones across Ukraine that Russia launched for a second consecutive day.

“When Kryvyi Rih is in mourning, the enemy attacks again. And it once again aims at civilians,” regional head Serhii Lysak said Wednesday.

Russia stepped up its bombing of Ukraine on Monday, firing more than 100 missiles and a similar number of drones in its biggest onslaught in weeks.

The intensified bombing campaign coincided with what could prove to be a decisive period of the war, which Russia launched on Feb. 24, 2022.

Russian forces have been driving deeper into Ukraine’s partly occupied eastern Donetsk region, whose total capture is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defense in the area.

At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion onto Russian soil since World War II. The move is in part an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.

At the hotel in Kryvyi Rih, rescuers on Wednesday found a final body under the rubble. The rescue operation then ended.

Meanwhile, Ukraine claimed its anti-aircraft defenses destroyed a Russian Su-25 jet in the Donetsk region.

Ukraine also kept up its long-range drone attacks on Russia’s rear logistical areas.

Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed responsibility for an attack on an oil depot in Russia’s Rostov region, and in the first known Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kirov region, Kirov governor Alexander Sokolov said three Ukrainian drones fell near an oil depot there. The region is about 950 kilometers (roughly 600 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian border.

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