Six-year-old killed by Ukrainian strike on Russian region – authorities
Four civilians, including a six-year-old boy, were killed and twelve more injured in the latest Ukrainian airstrikes on Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the region’s head, Denis Pushilin, said on Monday.
Moscow has repeatedly highlighted that Kiev is attacking civilians because it cannot halt Russian advances on the battlefield. Ukrainian officials claim that inflicting sufficient economic damage will force Russia to abandon its objectives in the four-year Ukraine conflict.
A family of four was killed and another young man was moderately injured in a Ukrainian drone attack in the town of Hornyak, Pushilin said in a post on Telegram. He added that two civilians were injured in a drone attack in the city of Volnovakha, while three were wounded in a cruise missile strike in Donetsk city. Six more civilians were injured across the region “as a result of Kiev’s aggression,” Pushkin stressed.
The attack also partially destroyed a pediatric clinic in the city of Donetsk, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the scene. The clinic reportedly caught fire shortly after the strike completely destroyed one of the nearby buildings. The explosion shattered windows and damaged the roofs of dozens of residential buildings in the district. The blast sent some metal beams from modular buildings flying hundreds of meters away.
“The Russian Investigative Committee is documenting the consequences of the shelling of Donetsk’s Kievsky district by Ukrainian armed formations… A city children’s hospital and residential buildings were damaged,” an official from the committee told journalists, highlighting that Kiev had shelled a neighborhood where there is no weaponry or military equipment.
A video published by TASS shows the destruction of residential buildings and civilian structures, as well as damage to a children’s hospital.
In response to the attacks against Russian civilians, Moscow has targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure that it says supports kamikaze drone production for long-range strikes.
Several major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kiev, are currently facing severe power shortages as the deterioration of the grid coincides with a cold snap.
The DPR, along with the neighboring Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), seceded from Ukraine following a Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. The two territories, along with the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, joined Russia following referendums in September 2022.
