Russian strike kills four in Zelensky’s hometown

A Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig in the centre of the country on Friday killed four people and wounded several others, the regional governor said.

The industrial city, which is the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been under persistent Russian bombardment since the beginning of the Kremlin’s invasion in February 2022.

“Each such terrorist attack is another reminder of who we are dealing with. Russia will not stop on its own — it can only be stopped by joint pressure. The pressure of everyone in the world who values life,” Zelensky said after the attack.

The governor of the wider Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergiy Lysak, said three women and one man had been killed and blamed Moscow for the attack.

He said five more people had been wounded and three in a critical condition were taken to hospital.

Lysak said a residential building and an educational facility had been damaged in the strike and that a fire had broken out in one of the damaged buildings.

He shared a video showing a multiple-storey structure with its roof ripped open and debris littering the street below.

The emergency services issued images of panicked residents evacuating from damaged buildings with their belongings and pets.

READ ALSO: Russia sentences Navalny lawyers to years behind bars

Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said Russian forces had struck the industrial hub with ballistic missiles.

“Once again, Russia is cynically violating the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly prohibit attacks on civilian objects and guarantee the protection of civilians in times of war,” he said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the strike.

Kryvyi Rig, which lies some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the front line, had an estimated population of around 600,000 people before Russia launched its full scale invasion.

Russian forces have been advancing at key sectors across the front line and on Friday claimed to have captured the village of Slovianka in the eastern Donetsk region.

Moscow claimed to have annexed Donetsk, alongside three other eastern and southern Ukrainian regions in late 2022, despite not fully controlling them.

The attack came shortly after Kyiv said it had launched a missile strike one day earlier on the western Belgorod region targeting air defence systems and damaging military radars.

Kyiv also said its air-defence systems had shot down 33 Russian drones over 11 Ukrainian region at night.