Russia launched no fewer than 20 cruise missile attacks early Friday across Ukraine, including in the capital, Kyiv, killing people in their apartments as they slept.
Africa Today News, New York gathered that 14 people were killed, including two 10-year-old children, when the missile strikes hit an apartment building in Uman in central Ukraine. The Ukrainian National Police told reporters that 12 people were wounded and three children were rescued from the rubble after the attack.
A mother and her toddler daughter were killed in the eastern city of Dnipro. No fatalities were reported in Kyiv.
The attacks came just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping about finding a solution to the war. The Chinese leader said China would dispatch a peace envoy to Ukraine.
Following Friday’s missile strikes, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted saying; ‘The way to peace is to kick Russia out of Ukraine.’
On Thursday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution recognizing that Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children has evidence of genocide.
‘This decision,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address, ‘will significantly help our global efforts to bring Russia and its officials, including the head of the terrorist state, to justice for genocide and genocidal policies against Ukraine.’
Also, Thursday, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said he asked Pope Francis, during a private audience, for his help with returning Ukrainian children to Ukraine who have been ‘detained, arrested, and criminally deported to Russia.’
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their alleged involvement in the deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.