The newborn child’s mother and a doctor were pulled from the rubble of the destroyed medical facility in Zaporizhzhia, as nearby private houses were also damaged in the devastating S-300 missile assault. The region’s governor said the rockets were Russian.
“The enemy has once again decided to try to achieve with terror and murder what he wasn’t able to achieve for nine months and won’t be able to achieve,” Zelensky said, referring to Russia.
The first lady expressed her condolences for the two-day-old boy’s death in the strike in her tweet.
“Horrible pain. We will never forget and never forgive,” Zelenska said.
Photos posted by the governor showed thick smoke rising above mounds of rubble, being combed by emergency workers against the backdrop of a dark night sky.
“At night, Russian monsters launched huge rockets at the small maternity ward of the hospital in Vilniansk,” regional governor Oleksandr Starukh said, on the Telegram messaging app.
“Grief overwhelms our hearts — a baby was killed who had just seen the light of day. Rescuers are working at the site.”
The State Emergency Service said the two-story building was destroyed and said the doctor, woman and newborn were the only people in the ward at the time.
Medical workers’ efforts have been complicated by the succession of Russian attacks in recent weeks on Ukraine’s infrastructure.
Ukrainian medical facilities have been hit by a wave of missiles in recent months, with the World Health Organisation having identified some 703 attacks on medical complexes across the country since February.
About one in five people in Ukraine has difficulty accessing medicine, Dr. Jarno Habicht, the World Health Organisation’s representative in Ukraine, said on Monday. The problem is worse in Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia, with one in three people there unable to get the medicine they need, Habicht added.
It is a problem that will be exacerbated by heavy snowfall during Ukraine’s harsh winter season, which poses a “formidable challenge” to the health system, the WHO official warned.
Most Ukrainians left without power after new Russian strikes
A punishing new barrage of Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure on Wednesday caused power outages across large parts of the country as well as neighboring Moldova, piling more damage onto Ukraine’s already battered power network and adding to the misery for civilians as winter begins.
Multiple regions reported attacks in quick succession and Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said that “the vast majority of electricity consumers were cut off.” Officials in Kyiv said three people were killed and nine wounded in the capital after a Russian strike hit a two-story building.
Russia has been pounding the power grid and other facilities with missiles and exploding drones for weeks and the energy system is being damaged faster than it can be repaired.
Before the latest barrage, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said that Russian strikes had already damaged around half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Rolling power outages have become the horrid new normal for millions and the latest barrage affected water supplies, too. Ukrainian officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is hoping that the misery of unheated and unlit homes in the cold and dark of winter will turn public opinion against a continuation of the war but say it’s having the opposite effect, strengthening Ukrainian resolve.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Wednesday that “one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities has been hit” and there were “several more explosions in different districts” of the city. He said water supplies were knocked out in all of Kyiv.
There were power outages in parts of Kyiv, while power was out in the wider Kyiv region, in the northern city of Kharkiv, the western city of Lviv, and in all or part of the Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Odesa and Khmelnytskyi regions. In Moldova, Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said that “we have massive power outages across the country,” whose Soviet-era energy systems remain interconnected with Ukraine.
Russia steps up missile strikes as Zelenskyy addresses world leaders
It was the second outage this month in Moldova. The country’s pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, said in a statement that “Russia left Moldova in the dark.” She said that the future of Moldova, a country of about 2.6 million people, “must remain toward the free world.” Moldova’s foreign minister said the Russian ambassador was being summoned to give explanations.
Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear operator, Energoatom, said the strikes led to the country’s last three fully functioning nuclear power stations all being disconnected from the power grid in an “emergency protection” measure. It said they would resume supplying electricity as soon as the grid is “normalised.”
Energoatom said on its Telegram channel that radiation levels at the sites are unchanged and “all indicators are normal.”
The Energy Ministry said the attacks also caused a temporary blackout of most thermal and hydroelectric power plants, and transmission facilities also were affected. Power workers were working to restore supply, “but given the extent of the damage, we will need time,” it said on Facebook.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched around 70 cruise missiles on Wednesday and 51 were shot down, as were five exploding drones.
Wednesday’s blackouts also caused “the largest internet outage in Ukraine in months and the first to affect neighboring Moldova, which has since partially recovered,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at network-monitoring Kentik Inc.
Kyiv’s city’s mayor warned of a harsh winter ahead amid widespread power cuts and dropping temperatures in light of Russia’s deadly missile on an infrastructure facility.
The attack on Wednesday killed at least three people, including a 17-year-old girl, and injured at least 11 others, as local authorities later suspended water supply in the region following the shelling.
“We must also prepare for the worst scenario,” the mayor Vitali Klitschko, told Germany’s Bild newspaper.
“That would be if there were widespread power cuts and the temperatures were even colder,” he said in an interview published Tuesday.
“Then parts of the city would have to be evacuated, but we don’t want it to come to that!”
The Kremlin has been accused of deliberately targeting Ukraine’s civilian power grid in an effort to leave the civilian population without electricity and heat – an act that would amount to a war crime. A senior US State Department official said Monday that a consistent pattern of Russian attacks on civilian elements in Ukraine was “deeply troubling.”
In a symbolic move that echoed Western leaders’ condemnation of Russia’s invasion, the European Parliament on Wednesday recognised the country “as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state which uses means of terrorism.”
The EU Parliament called on the European Union “to further isolate Russia internationally” in a non-binding resolution, according to a press release.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the decision.
“Russia must be isolated at all levels and held accountable in order to end its long-standing policy of terrorism in Ukraine and across the globe,” he tweeted.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also on Twitter thanked the European Parliament “for the clear stance.”
CNN has reached out to the Russian authorities for comment.
