Horrifying video shows a missile slamming into a major administration building in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, early Tuesday — which President Volodymyr Zelensky quickly classified as a “war crime.”
Footage shared by the government showed the missile slamming into the right corner of the beautiful building in Freedom Square — leaving huge plumes of smoke after it was completely lit up as cars drove by.
“The strike against Kharkiv is a war crime. This is state terrorism on the part of Russia,” Zelensky said in a video statement Tuesday, the sixth day his nation was under siege from invading forces.
“No one will forgive. No one will ever forget,” the president said of the “frank, undisguised terror” on a square with “no military” targets.
The caught-on-camera hit came amid chilling reports that Russia had also used cluster bombs and vacuum bombs in the fierce assault on Kharkiv, a city in the country’s northeast of about 1.5 million. A maternity ward was relocated to a shelter amid an intense night of shelling.
The direct hit on the Soviet-era administrative building blew off parts of its roof and left inside and out covered in rubble. The state emergencies agency said that at least six people, including a child.
The UN human rights office said Tuesday that it has recorded the deaths of 136 civilians, including 13 children. Local officials have recorded more — and the real toll is feared to be far higher. More than half a million people have fled the country since Russia first invaded Thursday.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba decried the “barbaric Russian missile strikes” as he shared footage of the administration building lit up.
“Putin is unable to break Ukraine down. He commits more war crimes out of fury, murders innocent civilians. The world can and must do more. INCREASE PRESSURE, ISOLATE RUSSIA FULLY!”
The intensifying attacks on Kharkiv came as a 40-mile-long convoy of tanks and other military equipment was caught on satellite images forging toward Kyiv.
“Kharkiv and Kyiv are now Russia’s most important objectives. The terror aims to break us and break our resistance,” Zelensky said in his video Tuesday.
“They advance on the capital in the same way as on Kharkiv. This is why the defense of the capital today is the key priority for the state,” added the president, who has defiantly remained in his under-siege capital.
“Kyiv is special. If we protect Kyiv, we will protect the state. This is the heart of our country. And it must keep beating. And it will keep beating, so that life triumphs,” he said, according to a translation by CNN.
He also urged the EU to “prove you are with us” in the war.
The Kremlin on Tuesday denied striking civilian targets and used cluster bombs and vacuum bombs, despite abundant evidence.
A Ukrainian military official said Belarusian troops joined the war Tuesday in the Chernihiv region, without providing details.
The nation’s strongman President Alexander Lukashenko — one of Putin’s closest allies — insisted, however, that he had no plans to join the fight.
With Post wires