SERGIYVKA, (Ukraine): Missile strikes slammed into a residential building and a recreation centre early Friday, killing 21 people and wounding dozens in Ukraine’s Odessa region, in attacks swiftly condemned by Germany.
Two children were among the dead and six others among the injured, Ukrainian officials said, one day after Russia abandoned positions on a strategic island in a major setback to the Kremlin’s invasion.
The missiles struck the two buildings in the town of Sergiyvka about 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the Black Sea port of Odessa, which has become a strategic flashpoint in the now more than four-month-old war.
“The death toll in Odessa blast rose to 21,” Sergiy Bratchuk, Odessa deputy chief of district, told Ukrainian television. A 12-year-old boy was among the dead, he added.
The country’s head of emergency services, Sergiy Kruk, had earlier put the toll at 19. Thirty-eight people were wounded, including six children, he added on Facebook.
The strikes were launched by aircraft that flew in from the Black Sea, said Odessa military administration spokesman Sergiy Bratchuk.
“The worst-case scenario played out and two strategic aircraft came to the Odessa region,” he said in a television interview, adding they had fired “very heavy and very powerful” missiles.
Russia made no immediate comment on the strikes.
Germany said it was time the Russian population faced up to the truth of their government’s “cruel” actions.
“The cruel manner in which the Russian aggressor takes the deaths of civilians in its stride and is again speaking of collateral damages is inhuman and cynical,” said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.
The strikes follow global outrage earlier this week when a Russian strike destroyed a shopping centre in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, killing at least 18 civilians. President Vladimir Putin has denied Moscow’s forces were responsible.
On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed a “new” chapter of “history” with the European Union, after Brussels recently granted Ukraine “candidate status” in Kyiv’s push to join the 27-member bloc, even if membership is likely years away.
“We’re not close. Now we are together,” he told Ukraine’s parliament.
“Our journey to membership shouldn’t take decades. We should make it down this road quickly,” Zelensky said.
The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen told Ukrainian lawmakers that membership was “within reach” but urged them to make anti-corruption reforms.
In a decision that immediately inflamed tensions further between Kyiv and Moscow, the UN’s cultural agency inscribed Ukraine’s culture of cooking borshch soup on its list of endangered cultural heritage.
Ukraine considers the thick nourishing soup, usually made with beetroot, as a national dish although it is also widely consumed in Russia, other ex-Soviet countries and Poland.