t least three people have been killed and 25 injured after a Russian missile struck a restaurant in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday evening, officials have said.
Andriy Yermak, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration, said on Telegram that 25 people were injured, including a child.
The missile hit a restaurant and shopping centre in the city centre just after 8pm, according to Ukraine’s interior ministry.
Emergency services were continuing to comb through the shattered building in search of casualties on Tuesday night.
Ukraine’s interior ministry warned that civilians may be trapped under the rubble.
Kramatorsk is a major city west of the front lines in Donetsk province and a likely key objective in any Russian advance to move westward to capture all of the region.
The city has been the frequent target of Russian attacks, including a strike on the town’s railway station in April last year that killed 63 people.
The aftermath of a Russian missile attack in Kramatorsk
/ via REUTERSAsked about the attack, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said: “We condemn Russia’s brutal strikes against the people of Ukraine, which have caused widespread death and destruction and taken the lives of so many Ukrainian civilians.”
President Joe Biden on Sunday told Mr Zelensky that the United States “will continue to stand with Ukraine and provide Ukraine with weapons and equipment to defend itself against Russian aggression,” the spokesperson said.
The missile attacks came as Vladimir Putin told Russian military leaders that they had prevented an all out “civil war” by persuading mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to abort his armed march on Saturday.
Speaking at the Kremlin on Tuesday, the Russian president told up to 2,500 members of the military and security forces that they had saved the country from chaos.
“You have defended the constitutional order, the lives, security and freedom of our citizens. You have saved our Motherland from upheaval. In fact, you have stopped a civil war.”
He was joined by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose dismissal had been one of the mercenaries’ main demands.
Russia was plunged into crisis on Saturday after Wagner forces left Ukraine and began to move hundreds of miles towards Moscow on a “march for justice”. It followed a bitter, long-running feud between Prigozhin and Russia’s military brass.
