Vinnytsia: Russian strikes against a business center leave at least 21 dead

Serhiy Borzov, the governor of the region, said Russian forces fired four missiles in total. Ukrainian authorities found and confirmed the remains of two who struck, and the other two were shot down by Ukrainian air defense.

Ukraine’s state emergency service said 23 people were killed, including three children. Seventy-one people were hospitalized and 29 were still missing Thursday evening. The service said at 10:30 p.m. local time that its units had suspended work.

Photos sent to The Washington Post by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, who said they were taken at the scene, show a bloodied child, with her legs at an unnatural angle, lying next to a severed adult foot. In another photo, charred remains, barely recognizable as human, lie splintered in the dirt.

Gerashchenko identified the toddler as Elizaveta Dmitrieva. The clothes and shoes in the photo match those worn by the child, Lisa, in an Instagram story posted by her mother, identified by a classmate as Iryna Dmitrieva, an hour before the attack.

The Instagram account that appears to belong to Dmitrieva, who goes by the name Ira, is filled with photos of Lisa cuddling with her mother and frolicking through flowers. She was 4 years old and suffered from Down syndrome, according to the messages.

“Is it possible to fall in love over and over again?” Dmitireva wrote under a photo of her daughter posted last month.

A Ukrainian organization that works with children with Down syndrome confirmed in a Facebook after Thursday night that Lisa had been killed and Ira was in an intensive care unit in Vinnytsia. The group shared a link to a crowdfunding campaign to support Dmitrieva.

Lisa was at a speech therapy center in Vinnytsia before the attack, center director Valeriya Korol told The Post. “She visited this morning and then she went home and terrible things happened.”

“Little girl Lisa, killed by the Russians today, has become a ray of sunshine,” read a Telegram post on the account of the Ukrainian state emergency service. “Forgive us, child, that we did not save you.”

On his Telegram account, Zelensky denounced the attack, which struck about 110 miles southwest of the capital, Kyiv. He called it an “open act of terrorism” against civilians.

He shared video footage of blacked out buildings, burned vehicles and emergency personnel working at the scene.

Ukrainian officials accused Russia of hitting a target with no military value. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russian media organization RT, said the Defense Ministry in Moscow told her the Vinnytsia strike had hit a club of military officers. The Washington Post could not verify the claim.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of committing “another war crime”. He tweeted video from the scene which appeared to show a stroller lying in a debris-strewn street as a victim is carried on a stretcher and flames erupt from the site of the attack.

Footage taken by reporters shows rescue workers sifting through the rubble. Nearby, the charred carcasses of cars are stained with blood.

What are war crimes, and is Russia committing them in Ukraine?

International law prohibits the deliberate targeting of civilian sites or attacks that cause disproportionate civilian casualties having regard to the military objective. “We will bring Russian war criminals to justice for every drop of Ukrainian blood and tears,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

UN Secretary General António Guterres was “appalled” by the missile attack, said his deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.

“Russia is committing another horrific attack that is claiming the lives of innocent civilians in Vinnytsia,” said US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget A. Brink. wrote on Twitter. United States Posted a new warning to American citizens in Ukraine on Thursday about the threat of “unpredictable” missile strikes.

The attack took place as Ukrainian, European Union and United Nations officials gathered in The Hague for a conference on Accountability for War Crimes in Ukraine, hosted by Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

The gathering was intended to coordinate the multitude of efforts by international and domestic actors to investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes committed during the war in Ukraine. At Thursday’s conference, 45 countries, including the United States, signed a declaration to work together on investigations. Khan called for a “comprehensive strategy” to hold perpetrators of war crimes in Ukraine accountable.

In a video address to attendees, Zelensky presented the conference as a watershed moment for international law.

Invoking the attack on Vinnytsia, “an ordinary and peaceful town”, he called for a minute’s silence for “the memory of all those who were killed by Russian crimes”. The assembled officials stood up and lowered their heads.

An “unprecedented” effort to document war crimes in Ukraine. But what chance of justice?

Russia’s atrocities during the invasion of Ukraine – including the shooting of unarmed civilians, sexual violence and forced deportations – sparked an unprecedented global effort to hold Russia accountable under law. internationally, even as the fighting continues. Funding, resources and support have poured in to help Ukraine’s Attorney General Iryna Venediktova and International Criminal Court investigators, among other actors.

However, the probe network has raised concerns about overlap. Countries represented at Thursday’s conference agreed to establish a coordination group to avoid duplication of efforts, train Ukrainian prosecutors and increase the number of forensic teams operating in Ukraine, Reuters reported. They also pledged $20 million to help the ICC.

At a separate meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an expert mission said it had found “clear patterns of serious violations of international humanitarian law attributable mainly to Russian armed forces”.

Ukrainian courts have already convicted three Russian soldiers of war crimes, and the prosecutor general’s office has registered more than 22,000 additional alleged war crimes. Meanwhile, a global movement to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression is growing, as the invasion has drawn attention to the issue of illegal warfare.

Analysis: A Growing Movement Against Illegal War

Ukrainian officials on Thursday called for the creation of a special tribunal to try Russia for its war of “aggression”.

Speaking to diplomats, judicial authorities and prosecutors at the Ukraine Accountability Conference via video link, Kuleba said the ICC’s legal “architecture” was not enough on its own and urged others to support the creation of a special “ad hoc” tribunal with “temporary jurisdiction”. to examine the crimes committed by Russia since the beginning of the invasion on February 24. The ICC does not have jurisdiction to prosecute the crime of aggression.

“We call on our international partners to consider reaching an agreement on the establishment of the special court for the suppression of the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” Kuleba said. Zelensky said such a tribunal will “ensure just and legal punishment” of Russian officials who started the war.

Hoekstra, the Dutch foreign minister, said the Netherlands would consider establishing a Ukrainian international war crimes tribunal, according to Reuters.

European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell also denounced Russia’s “unjustified military aggression” and “violation of international law”.

“Let me be very clear: the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes must and will be held accountable,” he said.

Robyn Dixon, Dalton Bennett, Missy Ryan, Bryan Pietsch and Zina Pozen contributed to this report.