A Russian missile strike on an outpatient clinic in the city of Dnipro has killed two people and injured 30, in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as a crime against humanity.
In the latest wave of aerial attacks on Ukraine, a salvo of air-launched missiles aimed at Kyiv were launched by Russian aircraft over the Caspian Sea early on Friday morning but they were all intercepted, according to the capital’s military administration, in what they said was the 13th attack on the city this month.
Ukrainian air defence also claimed to have shot down 25 out of 31 Iranian-designed Shahed drones aimed at Kyiv.
The missile that landed on the Dnipro clinic killed a 69-year-old passerby, according to the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, who said another man’s body had been found in the rubble.
Lysak said three of the injured people were in a serious condition.
“Another missile attack, another crime against humanity as such,” Zelenskiy said on Twitter. “The buildings of a psychological clinic and a veterinary clinic in the city of Dnipro were destroyed.
“Only an evil state can fight against clinics. There can be no military purpose in this. It is pure terror.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, the presidential adviser, said Russia was doomed to lose the war, but the longer it continued, the higher the civilian toll. He said: “The latest strikes on Dnipro show the Russians are just trying to kill off as many people as they can, just because they can.”
About 87 miles (140km) north of Dnipro, a Russian S-300 missile hit a dam in the Karlivka district, in Donetsk province, putting the population at risk of severe flooding.
Ukrainian military spokesperson, Natalia Humeniuk, said Russia was using Shaheds and other drones to lure Ukrainian air defences into responding and revealing their position to be targeted later by missiles. “They try to attack in waves precisely to see where the defences are and where to hit next,” she told Ukrainian television.
In Russia, local authorities said drones caused a blast on Friday that damaged a residential and an office building in the southern city of Krasnodar, just east of Crimea across the Kerch strait.
Krasnodar’s governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “There is some damage to buildings, but critical infrastructure was not damaged. And most importantly, there were no casualties.”
Russian officials also claimed Ukraine had shelled border areas of the Belgorod province, the target of a raid this week by Ukrainian-based Russian rebel groups.
The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said negotiations with Ukraine were impossible as long as Zelenskiy was in office.
“This conflict will last for a very long time. For decades, probably. This is a new reality,” Medvedev, who is now deputy chair of the Russian security council, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. “Everything always ends in negotiations, and this is inevitable, but as long as these people are in power, the situation for Russia will not change in terms of negotiations.”
Podolyak said that from Kyiv’s point of view talks with Moscow would be pointless. “Negotiating with Russia today would be like retreating when you are winning,” he said. “Loss of Ukraine would be a loss for democracy. Why would you let democracy lose? If Putin doesn’t lose and the Russian elites don’t change, then the war will explode with even greater force in a couple of years.”
