Putin’s brutal war against Ukrainian civilians continues in the western part of the country.
Burning cars, an overturned pram, at least one dead baby on the street – the pictures and news from Vinnytsia (367,000 inhabitants plus thousands of refugees from the east) are shocking. There the Russian army launched a devastating attack on the center of the city on Thursday morning.
The scene of Thursday morning’s attack
According to initial reports, at least 17 people died and another 30 were injured when three Russian army cruise missiles hit the “Recreational, Cultural and Educational Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” in Vinnytsia.
What sounds like a military target is actually a complex used primarily by the families of Ukrainian soldiers. “These centers were built for officers in the Soviet Union to limit the officers’ ability to spend their free time outside of the army and to show how the state thinks about every aspect of their lives,” a resident of the city told BILD.
Numerous cars were thrown into the air in the attack
In addition, the traditionally extremely inaccurate Russian missiles hit not only the eight-story building of the Ukrainian military, but also adjacent apartment buildings, destroying up to 50 cars in nearby parking lots and also causing a bloodbath at a busy intersection nearby.
Photos show an overturned stroller at a crosswalk. Lying lifeless inside: a baby. The child’s mother is also said to have died. According to local reports, there was only one foot near the stroller.
The devastating attack on Vinnytsia came at the same time as Russian rocket attacks on Mykolayiv and other towns far from the frontline, and just days after the attack on a residential building in the town of Khasiv Yar that killed 48, all of them Ukrainian civilians.
Vinnytsia is 380 kilometers from the nearest front line – that in Kherson in the south of the country.