Russian Missiles Strike Civilian Infrastructure Posing as Troop Barracks

"My neighbours are gone. No one is left." 

"Only the kitchens were left standing."

"An elderly woman, her daughter and two grandchildren lived on the ninth floor. They are gone." 

"A man with his son lived on the eighth floor. They are gone."

"A woman with her daughter lived on the seventh floor. They are gone."

"A young family lived on the sixth floor, their son was lucky ... he is alive." 

Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, Central Ukraine town of Uman  

 

"I couldn't understand what was happening. I went to the balcony and saw glass everywhere. It was horrible." 

"Russia is a terrorist state. You can see, there's no military object here. And it happened at four o'clock in the morning, as people were sleeping."

Oleksandr, 35, Uman resident    

 

"[I heard an explosion and] everything shook". 

"We tried to find ways to leave the building. I heard a voice of a child who was screaming in the flat next to ours. We wanted to help other people. There was smoke and fire everywhere."  

"Peaceful people were just sleeping."

Another resident, 60-year-old Vanda, Uman, Ukraine

Rescuers in Uman pulled casualties from the rubble during Friday morning   Ukraine State Emergency Service

"Another night of Russian terror. Missiles and UAVs."

"Russian evil can be stopped by weapons -- our defenders are doing it."

"And it can be stopped by sanctions -- global sanctions must be enhanced."

"This Russian terror must face a fair response from Ukraine and the world."

"And it will."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

"Russia's Air Force carried out a collective missile strike using long-range high-precision weapons overnight targeting temporary deployment sites of Ukrainian army reserve units."

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov

 

"Together with [Slovak President] Zuzana Caputova, we see the value of freedom and justice."

"It is hard to see with your own eyes how Ukrainians are paying the highest price for it. With the blood and lives of their own citizens."

"In the fight against the aggressor, they defend what we have in common. That is why we will back them."

Petr Pavel, President of the Czech Republic

Friday Russia hurled missiles at cities in Ukraine while people slept, its first large-scale airstrikes in almost two months. The long winter Russian offensive had seen little ground gained by Moscow. Only in Bukhov, a small mining town, was the grinding battle ongoing through the winter months. Ukrainian servicemen have been opposing the Russian plans of taking Bukhov for a year, despite that hundreds of thousands of reservists were called up, along with convicts recruited as mercenaries from prisons in Russian.

Kyiv, for its part, is deep in preparations for its spring counteroffensive, newly provided by foreign supporters with hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles. The plan is to drive Russia out of the close to one-fifth of Ukraine occupied by Moscow which President Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed. "As soon as there is God's will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it", stated Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleskii Reznikov.

Ukraine is "to a high percentage ready", he said, in possession of new and modern weapons to provide an "iron fist". Meanwhile, thanks to Moscow targeting overnight strikes at Ukrainian reserve troops, successfully struck, preventing them from reaching the front, as it claimed, the campaign was a success, but of which there was no evidence, missiles having indiscriminately been sent into towns and cities across the country, far from front lines; civilians were targeted and killed. 

In Uman, central Ukraine, firefighters battled an apartment building blaze after an upper floor was struck by a Russian missile where at least 23 civilians were killed, four children among them. Rescue workers made their awkward progress through smouldering rubble, hoisting a body on a stretcher while a man wearing a face mask wept, watching, and a woman comforted him.

Kyiv too was rocked by explosions during the night, along with central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and to the south Mykolaiv and Ukrayinka; far, far from the front lines...nowhere near where Ukrainian reserve troops were stationed, as Moscow claimed. Out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia, the Ukrainian military said it had shot down 21. 

 

And Moscow reiterated yet again that it does not deliberately target civilians, to Kyiv's statement that strikes on cities far from the front lines have no military purpose, other than intimidating and harming civilians.

Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree addressing the pathway to Russian citizenship for those people living in parts of Ukraine under Moscow's control. Those who choose to decline, or who have no wish to legalize their status as 'Russian citizens' could be deported. 

 

In the lead-up to a visit expected later this year to South Africa, the opposition premier of Western Cape Province said he plans to order local police to seize Putin and presumably hand him over to the ICC to stand trial on charges of war crimes. Premier Alan Winde condemned the ruling African National Congress government for welcoming the Russian Leader despite his arrest ordered by the International Criminal Court for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.

Still from video