A Russian airstrike on a prison in southeastern Ukraine overnight killed 17 inmates and wounded dozens of others, Kyiv said on Tuesday, after Washington pressured Russia to end its invasion. The strike came hours after US President Donald Trump issued Moscow with a new deadline to end its grinding invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year – or face tough new sanctions.
And it also comes on the three-year anniversary of a strike on another detention facility in occupied Ukrainian territory that Kyiv blamed on Moscow and that was reported to have killed dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers.
"It was a deliberate strike, intentional, not accidental. The Russians could not have been unaware that they were targeting civilians in that facility," Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media. Russia carried out eight strikes on the Zaporizhzhia region overnight, hitting the prison, according to Ivan Fedorov, the head of the military administration.
Ukraine's justice ministry said Moscow's forces hit the prison with four glide bombs, killing 17 inmates and wounding another 42, including one of the detention center's employees. Bricks and debris were strewn on the ground around buildings with blown-out windows, according to images released by the ministry. The facility's perimeter was intact and there was no threat that inmates would escape, it added. Rescue workers were seen searching for survivors in pictures released by the region's emergency services.
A senior Ukrainian source said that 274 people were serving sentences in the Bilenkivska facility, where 30 people worked. The source added there were no Russian war prisoners being held at the center. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets meanwhile said the Zaporizhzhia attack was further evidence of Russian "war crimes." "People held in places of detention do not lose their right to life and protection," he wrote on social media.
In addition to the glide bomb attack, the Ukrainian air force said that Russia had launched 37 drones and two missiles overnight, adding that its air defense systems had downed 32 of the drones only.
In the Kharkiv region, five people were killed and three wounded, hours after US President Donald Trump set a new deadline for Moscow to end its invasion. "According to preliminary data, five civilians were killed and three more were wounded to varying degrees as a result of the shelling," the police said on Telegram, adding that Russia struck the area "presumably with a multiple launch rocket system".
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile strike on the town of Kamianske killed two, wounded five and damaged a hospital, Sergiy Lysak, head of the regional military administration said on Telegram. Another person was killed and several wounded in an attack in the region's Synelnykivsky district, he said.
In a separate attack on Velyka Mykhailivka, Monday night, a "75-year-old woman was killed. A 68-year-old man was wounded. A private house was damaged," he posted on Telegram.
In southern Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person, the region's acting governor said Tuesday. "A car was damaged on Ostrovsky Street. Unfortunately, the driver who was in it died," Yuri Slyusar, acting governor of the Rostov region, said in a post on Telegram.