Russian cruise missiles from Black Sea killed at least 22 people in attack on Vinnytsia, Ukraine says

At least 23 people have died in an attack on the central Ukrainian town of Vinnystia, according to Chief of Ukraine’s National Police Ihor Klymenko. 

The number of dead includes three children, and dozens of people are still unaccounted for, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SES).

A further 64 people, including four children, have been hospitalized — 34 of whom are in a serious condition and five in critical condition, SES said, adding that the search continues for 42 people who are unaccounted for.

Klymenko said only six of the bodies had so far been identified, and DNA tests may be required to identify others.

More than 50 buildings and more than 40 cars were damaged by the strikes, Klymenko added.

The attack was carried out with Russian Kalibr cruise missiles that were launched from submarines stationed in the Black Sea, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

“The enemy continues to keep ready 32 cruise missiles of the ‘Kalibr’ type on three surface and two submarine ships, and two big landing ships are also present” in the Black Sea, the Operational Command South of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had said on Monday.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, described the missile attack as “terrorism.”

“Already 20 civilians have been confirmed dead following a Russian missile strike on Vinnytsia. Three children, including a toddler, in the photo. This is terrorism,” Kuleba tweeted.

“Deliberate murder of civilians to spread fear. Russia is a terrorist state and must be legally recognized as such,” he added.

More reaction: The United Nations secretary-general said he is appalled by the missile attack in Vinnytsia.

“The Secretary-General condemns any attacks against civilians or civilian infrastructure and reiterates his call for accountability for such violations,” a spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

In a joint statement, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič condemned the strike.

“We have both witnessed the horrific destruction Russia brought on Ukraine and its people with our own eyes. The civilian population continues to pay a high toll in this war, due to Russia’s fundamental disregard of international humanitarian law, facing death, violence, including sexual violence, forced deportations and destruction,” they said.

There can be no impunity for these actions and all those responsible will be held accountable, they added.

See what the scene looks like on the ground:

Dmytro Butriy, the acting head of the Kherson region military administration, said that 44 settlements in the largely occupied area have been liberated.

Butriy gave no timescale. A Ukrainian offensive in Kherson began in May and has since recovered a number of villages, but no towns of any size.

Butriy said at a news briefing that the settlements were still suffering as they were under constant Russian bombardment.

Butriy alleged that the Russians had shot civilian cars in convoys as they tried to leave the region. CNN has previously reported on the shelling of convoys of civilian vehicles as they have tried to leave Russian-occupied areas.

Butriy also claimed that “there were times when civilians were discovered dead with traces of torture.”

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that “people can leave the occupied territories of Kherson region through the occupied Crimea or through [the] Vasylivka [checkpoint] towards Zaporizhzhia. It is necessary to leave, despite the fact that it is difficult. It is much more dangerous to stay in the occupied territory than to dare to go through all the checkpoints and leave.”

Other Ukrainian officials have said it’s increasingly difficult for people to leave through the Russian checkpoint at Vasylivka, with people spending several days waiting to get through. 

Russia looking to Iran to supply drones “speaks volumes” about the isolation of both nations from the international community and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “problems in terms of replenishing his own defense needs,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Thursday. 

“Russia turning to Iran for the help speaks volumes about the degree to which both nations, for their actions into different areas of the world, have been increasingly isolated by the international community,” Kirby said.

Newly declassified US intelligence indicates that Iran is expected to supply Russia with “hundreds” of drones — including weapons-capable drones — for use in the war in Ukraine, with Iran preparing to begin training Russian forces on how to operate them as early as late July, according to White House officials.

“Clearly, they have the domestic production capability. I don’t know the parameters of the deal that Mr. Putin struck; I can’t speak with specificity about how well Iran will be able to step up to this requirement,” Kirby said.

Kirby said that Biden’s “preferred option” with Iran still remains diplomatic, but the US “will not take any option off the table.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Thursday for the creation of a special tribunal “on the crime of aggression against Ukraine” that will bring to account Russia’s “top military and political leadership.”

“Together with other countries, organizations and institutions, we shall use all available tools to get justice for the thousands of innocent victims of this crime, and we shall not rest until the guilty are brought to justice,” Kuleba said in his address to an international conference in The Hague on crimes committed in Ukraine.

While the international criminal justice system is sufficiently equipped to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, the available institutions face legal difficulties investigating the crime of aggression against Ukraine, he said, adding that “it is necessary to create a Special Tribunal capable of holding the Russian leadership accountable for this kind of crime.”

“In the absence of appropriate tools to allow justice to be done, we shall return to the beginnings of international criminal justice in order to create these,” Kuleba said. 

Kuleba said the initiative to create a Special Tribunal has been already supported by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the Sejmas of the Lithuanian Republic.

The initiative to create a Special Tribunal is not intended “to replace or weaken the important efforts of the International Criminal Court and other international courts and tribunals,” but rather “supplement” them, he told the conference Thursday.

The ad-hoc Tribune’s mandate would be investigate and prosecute crimes of aggression against Ukraine since Feb. 24, covering all individuals — including state heads and officials, Kuleba detailed.

Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, who is chairing the conference, echoed Kuleba’s comments, saying a Special Tribunal would fill a legal “vacuum” to prosecute perpetrators of war crimes committed in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Thursday allowing the government to introduce special economic measures to support the Russian armed forces during “counter-terrorism and other operations” outside the country.

As the special measures get adopted, companies will not be able to refuse government contracts and employees will have to work at night and on holidays. 

The government also received the right to temporarily reactivate mobilization capacities and facilities and the right to unbook the material assets of the state reserve.

Although the Russian government continues to reject framing the conflict in Ukraine as a war, the new measures effectively mean the country is re-shaping its industry in support of the ongoing invasion. 

On Thursday, Putin also signed additional laws that include tougher measures for individuals or entities considered foreign agents by Russia, and expanding criminal liability for defection to high treason. 

WNBA star Brittney Griner’s hearing at a Russian court near Moscow has concluded today without a verdict and is due to resume tomorrow at 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET), according to a US official.

The hearing was held at the Khimki court of the Moscow region a week after Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges. This is Griner’s third appearance over the past three weeks at the court.

The two-time US Olympic basketball gold medalist was arrested Feb. 17 at a Moscow airport, a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, on accusations of alleged attempted drug smuggling, which is an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison.  

One of Griner’s lawyers, Maria Blagovolina, told reporters in a statement that during today’s hearing, Maxim Ryabkov, the director of BC UMMC Ekaterinburg — the basketball club that Griner played for in Russia — “gave a positive description of Brittney Griner during his speech in court, noting her outstanding abilities as a player and personal contribution to strengthening the team spirit, which allowed the team to achieve the highest results in the Russian basketball premier league and in international competitions for many years.”  

Elizabeth Rood, charge d’affaires of the US embassy, also attended the hearing.

There’s a new and potentially very significant factor in the Ukrainian conflict: the Ukrainians’ ability to use recently supplied Western systems to hit Russian command posts, logistical hubs and ammunition dumps a long way beyond the front lines.

In the past week, there have been enormous explosions in several occupied areas in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. The available evidence, from satellite imagery and Western analysts, is that the targeting has been highly effective.

For months, the Ukrainian military pleaded for long-range precision artillery and rocket systems from Western partners. Now they have them and are deploying them to considerable effect in both the south and east of the country.

The Ukrainian military is not giving away many specifics but Vadim Denysenko, a senior official at the Interior Ministry, said Wednesday that in the past two weeks, “above all things thanks to the weapons that Ukraine received, we were able to destroy approximately two dozen warehouses with weapons and stocks of fuel and lubricants. This will certainly affect the intensity of fire” the Russians can muster, he said.

Best-in-class is the US-supplied HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, but the Ukrainians have also received M777 howitzers from both the US and Canada and Caesar long-range howitzers from France.

What Russia is saying: The Russian foreign ministry said Thursday that the United States provided Ukraine with the necessary intelligence information and sent instructors to help Ukraine shell Donbas with the HIMARS missile systems.

“The armed formations of Ukraine widely used HIMARS multiple rocket launchers received from the United States and did so with the direct assistance of the American side, which not only provided the necessary intelligence information but also secretly seconded instructors who helped representatives of the Kyiv regime to aim correctly,” said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, according to state news agency TASS.

Zakharova added that “the noticeable activation of the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is connected to the supply of these heavy weapons which, apparently, received an order from Kyiv without the slightest hesitation to use the mentioned installations against the civilian population.”

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CNN’s Anna Chernova contributed reporting to this post.

For months, Viktor and Svetlana Maximchuk watched many of their friends and relatives pack up and leave their hometown of Mykolaiv.

They stayed put, even as the war kept edging closer to the southern Ukrainian city.

“We really didn’t want to leave,” Svetlana said. “We hoped everything would be fine. Every day, we hoped there would be peace. Every week, we told ourselves, ‘just one more week, one more week and it will be fine.'”

Earlier this week, after days of heavy shelling, the bombing got worse yet again. They had no choice anymore.

They stuffed their most important possessions into a few backpacks and headed for the border.

“Russians came to our neighborhood, and there was a fight between the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, and the Ukrainian soldiers saved us. One of our friends died there,” Svetlana said. 

While the family survived unscathed, their car was damaged in the attack. Viktor managed to sell it, raising just enough money for their journey.

The fighting around Mykolaiv has ramped up in recent days. Twelve people were injured and several homes were destroyed in heavy fire on Monday night, officials said.

Another assault came on Thursday. According to reports from officials on the ground, the city was shelled by “more than 10 missile strikes” from a S-300 surface-to-air missile system. One person was reported injured.

As the fighting got worse, the Palanca refugee center was getting ready for another big influx — a bus carrying 70 people was on the way to the border.

The Maximchuks have two young children together, and Viktor has another child from a previous relationship. As a father of three, now out of job because of the war, he got permission to accompany his family and travel abroad. Most men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine. 

As the hot sun bore down on the refugee center, the couple recounted the horrors of life in Mykolaiv — the constant bombing and the front line moving ever closer to them. Their children were waiting inside a UNICEF playroom nearby.

In a few hours, a bus will take them toward Germany, where they have family and relatives.

“We told the kids we’re going on holiday. Our youngest didn’t want to go, but now, after two hours here, she is fine; she likes the toys here,” Svetlana said. 

French President Emmanuel Macron asked for “collective sobriety” from his country’s residents “to be in a position of consuming less” in the face of gas shortages.

“We are in a so-called hybrid war. So energy isn’t a consequence of our sanctions. Russia uses energy as it uses food in fact, as a weapon of war,” he said in an interview from the Elysée Palace garden after the traditional Bastille Day parade on Thursday. 

Macron said that he would “ask public administrations, big groups, and all those who can to put together a plan now, this summer” to reduce general consumption and save up on gas. 

“This scenario is not theoretical. It is a very harsh scenario, and we should get ready for it,” he said.

Macron also sought to reassure the French, saying that “we are currently refilling our reserves to have almost 100% of our reserves back by the fall,” also reiterating that France is “not very dependent on Russian gas.”

France gets less gas from Russia than some of its European neighbors.

Speaking more generally about the war in Ukraine, Macron said that “we should all prepare ourselves for the fact that it will last,” adding that the summer and early fall will “undoubtedly be very difficult.”