Russian missile hits Ukrainian city apartment after U.S. warns on war crimes

In the early hours of Tuesday, a Russian missile struck an apartment building in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv.

According to a Reuters witness, the latest strike on the city was hours after the United States warned that it would hold Russia accountable for war crimes.

The missile had caused one of the three explosions heard in the southern city in the early hours of Tuesday.

It completely destroyed one wing of the building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater. A fire crew pulled the dead body of a man from the rubble, the witness said.

On Monday, at least four people were killed as the Russian strikes on the capital Kyiv and other cities, in which  the second wave of air strikes in a week.

The Russian strikes followed advances by Ukrainian forces in the east and south and after an Oct. 8, blast on a bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Right now, there is a new Russian drone attack, Zelenskiy, said in a Monday evening video address.

There are (drones) that have been shot down.’

According to the Interfax Ukraine news agency, Telegram users had reported  a blast in the town of Fastiv just outside Kyiv, as well as in the southern port of Odesa.

Karine Jean-Pierre, U.S. President Joe Biden’s press secretary told reporters that the White House strongly condemns Russia’s missile strikes and said the attack continued to demonstrate Putin’s brutality.

The Russian President, Valdimir Putin had sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what he called a “special operation” to root out what it calls dangerous nationalists.

The Ukrainian forces were able to mount up stiff resistance, with the help of arms supplied by the United States and its allies, who have also imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw.

Jean-Pierre added that the United States would stand with the people of Ukraine “for as long as it takes’’. She also mentioned a $725 million military aid package announced for Ukraine last Friday,

We will continue to impose costs on Russia, hold them accountable for its war crimes, she said.

However, Russia denies targeting civilians. Its defence ministry said it had carried out a “massive” attack on military targets and energy infrastructure across Ukraine using high-precision weapons.

According to Ukraine, the attacks were carried out by Iran-made “suicide drones”, which fly to their target and detonate.

The United States, Britain and France agreed that Iran supplying drones to Russia would violate a U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six powers.

However, Iran denied supplying the drones to Russia on Monday, while the Kremlin has not commented.

The White House accused Iran of lying when it says Iranian drones were not being used by Russia in Ukraine.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations repeated a statement issued by the government on Friday, when asked for a comment, that said it supports upholding the U.N. Charter and the U.N. attempts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine.

Iran has been santioned by several EU foreign ministers on Monday over the transfer of drones to Russia.

The Ukraine’s military also added that it had destroyed 37 Russian drones since Sunday evening, or around 85 per cent of those used in attacks.

However, Reuters was not able to independently verify that tally.

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