Ukraine slams Russian attack on children’s hospital

A Russian strike on a children’s hospital in southern Ukraine wounded at least nine people, including four children, authorities said Wednesday, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “deliberate” attack that shows Moscow does not want peace.

The strike in Kherson blasted out windows and left bloodstains on the floor of treatment rooms, with debris strewn across stretchers and medical equipment, footage published by Ukrainian officials showed.

Russia has hit several hospitals and medical facilities during its invasion, drawing accusations of war crimes, though Moscow says it only targets military sites.

“They could not have been unaware of where they were striking. This was a deliberate Russian attack specifically against children, against medical personnel, against basic guarantees of life in the community,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said nine people were wounded. The youngest was aged eight, Zelenskyy said.

Around 100 people were inside the hospital at the time of the attack, Zelenskyy added.

Russia was “not only dragging out its terrorist war but also trying to do everything possible to ensure that no opportunity to end the war succeeds,” he said.

Moscow has not commented on the strike.

Kherson, a city Russian forces temporarily occupied in 2022, faces regular shelling and drone strikes from Moscow’s troops on the opposite side of the Dnipro river, the de facto front-line snaking through southern Ukraine.

Separate Russian attacks on the southern region of Odesa left 27,000 households without power, amid an intensification of air strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Similar campaigns in previous winters plunged millions into darkness and cut off heating in freezing temperatures.

Ukraine has kept up its own campaign of retaliatory strikes on Russia.

It claimed to have hit two Russian oil refineries and a gas processing plant overnight.

Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone attack had killed at least one person and wounded three in the border village of Shebekino.

Russia’s defense ministry said its troops had advanced on the front line, capturing the village of Vyshneve in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.