Russian strike on Ukraine’s Kharkiv wounds 21

A Russian strike on a residential neighborhood in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv wounded 21 people including three minors, the regional governor said Sunday.

Oleg Synegubov posted on Telegram that eight of the victims were hospitalized, two in critical condition, after the strike late Saturday, when dozens of people were asleep in the two multi-storey buildings that were hit.

Russia has repeatedly targeted Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city near the Russian border in the country’s east that counted 1.4 million inhabitants before Moscow launched its war in February 2022.

Rescue workers used torches to search through the rubble, while one girl shook with sobs and held fast to a corridor wall, too scared to descend the stairs and calling for her mother, an AFP reporter saw at the scene.

A rescuer took her by the hand saying “Everything is OK” and guided her down to her mother, Oleksandra.

“It has just blown up. It’s terrible in there, the place is a wreck,” she said.

The city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, said at the site that “As you can see, there are no military here.”

“Every day and every night Kharkiv suffers the hits,” he said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack showed why his forces needed to use weapons supplied by Western allies to strike deeper into Russian territory, which so far they have refused.

“We must reinforce our capabilities to better protect lives and ensure our security,” he said in a statement ahead of a US trip this week, where he will address the UN General Assembly and hold talks in Washington.