KRAMATORSK, Ukraine—The toll from a Russian missile strike on a restaurant in eastern Ukraine rose to 12 dead and at least 60 wounded on Thursday morning, including children, as the Kremlin insisted Russian forces only hit military-linked targets.
The latest tragedy came as US President Joe Biden denounced Vladimir Putin as a “pariah” while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the Russian president had been weakened by mercenary group Wagner’s aborted rebellion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile called the Kramatorsk strike a “terrorist attack” and in his Wednesday evening address announced the arrest of an individual who had coordinated Russian fire.
In the Ukrainian-controlled town, where Russian strikes also hit homes, shops, a post office and other buildings, “rescue workers removed another body” on Thursday morning, bringing the death toll to 12, according to Kyiv’s Interior Minister Igor Klymenko.
Three children were among the dead but the count of the wounded differed, with Klymenko putting the figure at 65 and emergency services counting 60.
The latter also said 11 people had been rescued from the Ria Pizza restaurant, an eatery popular with soldiers, aid workers and journalists.
‘Horrible and very sad’
Galyna, a military doctor, said she was near the restaurant when it was struck.
“We were in an apartment and we heard an explosion,” she said, adding there were numerous wounded inside.
“It’s horrible and very sad, but I am not surprised that a missile arrived here. It was a place where you could come and have a delicious lunch and coffee.
“I myself have sat there more than once.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that three Colombians were injured in the strike: decorated writer Hector Abad Faciolince, former Colombian peace negotiator Sergio Jaramillo and journalist Catalina Gomez.
He said on Wednesday that Bogota would be sending a note of diplomatic protest to Russia over the incident.
According to Ukrainian police, Russia fired two S-300 missiles—surface-to-air devices that it also uses for ground strikes —at Kramatorsk, which had a population of 150,000 before the war.
Moscow maintains that it only targets military facilities in Ukraine.
“Strikes are only carried out on objects that are in one way or another linked to military infrastructure,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“The Russian Federation does not carry out strikes on civilian infrastructure,” he added.
‘Pariah around the world’
Days after Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted rebellion—widely seen as the biggest threat to Kremlin authority in decades—Germany’s Scholz said it would “surely have long-term consequences in Russia.”
“It shows that the autocratic structures, the power structures, have cracks and he in no way sits as firmly in the saddle as he always claims,” Scholz told public broadcaster ARD.
“But I don’t want to take part in speculation about how long he’ll stay in office — it could be a long time or short, we don’t know.”
In Washington, Biden said it was too early to tell whether Putin had been weakened by the Wagner group’s mutiny.
“It’s hard to tell,” Biden told reporters Wednesday. “But he’s clearly losing the war” in Ukraine and “he’s losing the war at home.”
Putin is now “a pariah around the world,” Biden added in brief remarks.
In a meeting with the head of the southern Russian province of Dagestan, parts of which were aired on state television, Putin on Wednesday said that he “didn’t doubt” that he had the support of Russians during the mutiny.
‘A potential threat’
A feud between Wagner and the Russian army had escalated for months, with Prigozhin making increasingly scathing statements against the generals’ handling of the offensive in Ukraine, blaming them for thousands of Russian losses.
According to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday, Prigozhin aimed to detain the heads of the Russian military in the mutiny, but they discovered his planned rebellion early and avoided capture.
Kyiv has said the mutiny’s influence on fighting was minimal.
“Unfortunately, Prigozhin gave up too quickly. So there was no time for this demoralising effect to penetrate Russian trenches,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CNN in a video published Wednesday.
The conflict is now in its 16th month, with mass casualties on both sides and a rising civilian toll.
A day after Belarus welcomed Prigozhin into exile, Polish President Andrzej Duda warned the presence of Wagner troops in the Moscow-allied neighbour could pose a potential threat to the region.
“It is difficult for us to exclude today that the presence of the Wagner Group in Belarus could pose a potential threat to Poland, which shares a border with Belarus, a threat to Lithuania… as well as potentially to Latvia,” Duda told reporters during a visit to Kyiv.