Firefighters try to put out the fire on a mountain of rubble /
Ukrainian rescue services counted 30 dead last night and dozens missing
The number of deaths when a Russian missile hit a nine-story house in the city of Dnipro is already estimated at 30, a child among them. This has been confirmed by the governor of the region, Valentin Reznichenko. According to his words, today, Sunday, a 27-year-old woman was rescued from under the rubble, which has already been removed by almost 50% and 550 rescuers participate in their work.
In total, according to Reznichenko, 39 residents have already been extracted alive from what remains of the central part of the building, although it is estimated that under the rubble there are still about 40 people. It is the deadliest attack against civilians carried out against the town of Dnipro. The authorities have decreed three days of mourning.
The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, assures that there are also 73 injured, of which 13 are minors, 72 apartments were completely destroyed and more than 230 suffered damage. Four tents of the state emergency service of Ukraine and two more tents for volunteers have been set up on the site. Psychologists are also involved in caring for the injured and the families of the victims.
The adviser to the Ukrainian Presidency, Olerksiy Arestovich, speculated on Saturday that what hit the Dnipro house were fragments of a Russian X-22 missile, since he believed that it was previously shot down by the Army’s air defense systems. ukrainian. However, it was clear that so much destruction could not be the result of the missile’s debris. According to the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuri Ignat, the publications on which Arestovich relied “were wrong due to the haste with which they were disseminated.” What brought down a section of the Dnipro residential building was a Russian-made X-22 rocket commonly used in aviation strikes against aircraft carriers.
For his part, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Mykola Oleshuk, said in statements to Ukrainskaya Pravda that his country “does not have weapons capable of shooting down X-22 missiles, one of which hit a multi-story building in Dnipro.” In the statement released by his department, it is reported that “on January 14, 2023, X-22 cruise missiles were fired at the territory of Ukraine from five Tu-22M3 long-range bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces. The launches were carried out from the Kursk region and from the Azov Sea. At 3:30 p.m. on January 14, 2023, one of the missiles hit a high-rise building,” refuting Arestovich’s version. Oleschuk added that “the mass of the X-22 warhead is about 950 kilograms, the maximum range is up to 600 kilometers, when used from long distances, the target deviation can be hundreds of meters.”
Objective acomplished
The Russian Defense Ministry commented on Saturday that the rocket attack “achieved the objective.” The Russian ministry’s press release said that “a missile attack was carried out against Ukraine’s military command and control system and related energy facilities. All designated facilities were destroyed. The purpose of the attack was achieved.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal stated that “of the more than 30 missiles launched against Ukraine, more than 20 were shot down.” In his words, “several energy infrastructure facilities suffered damage. In this connection, the most difficult situation is in Kharkiv and kyiv.”
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in statements to the Russian public channel Rossiya-1 that, after the supposed takeover of Soledar by Russian troops, a point that kyiv continues to deny, “the dynamics of the special operation is positive and everything It is carried out according to the plans of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff». “I hope our fighters will give us more joy with their good results on the battlefield,” he added.
In August last year, the Dnipro region was already the target of attacks, but not as deadly as those on Saturday. Then the city of Márganets and the nearby town of Mirovoe were the targets of the Russian ‘Grad’ rockets. There were 13 deaths and a dozen wounded. A month earlier, in July, a missile bombardment in the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa caused more than twenty deaths and fifty wounded.