ONE PERSON HAS been killed and three injured when debris from a downed rocket hit a Kyiv apartment block today, as Russian forces press in on the capital, emergency services said.

Russian troops trying to encircle Kyiv have launched early morning strikes on the city for several successive days, putting traumatised residents further on edge.

Rescuers evacuated 30 people from the 16-storey building in eastern Darnitsky district after it was struck at 5.02 am local time (03.02 GMT), the State Emergency Services of Ukraine said.

The upper edge of the Soviet-style block was partially wrecked and an apartment on the top floor was destroyed, AFP journalists at the scene said.

“In Kyiv, due to the fall of the remains of a downed rocket, there was destruction and fire in a high-rise building,” the emergency services said on Facebook.

“According to preliminary information, 30 people were evacuated, three of whom were injured. One person has been killed.”

Almost all the windows of the building were shattered and at least three neighbouring blocks were damaged, AFP journalists said.

People were trying to clean their balconies and apartments, throwing out shards of glass and debris.

The incident happened just under two hours before the city emerged from a curfew imposed late Tuesday amid what Kyiv’s mayor called a “dangerous moment”.

Four people were killed in strikes on residential buildings in Kyiv on Tuesday, with one tower block engulfed in flames, while at least two people were killed on Monday.

Mariupol theatre attack

Yesterday, Ukraine claimed that Russia had attacked a theatre harbouring more than a thousand people in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.

The current death toll from the attack is unknown.

Officials posted images that appeared to show the once gleaming whitewashed three-storey theatre hollowed out and ablaze, with bricks and scaffolding piled high.

“The invaders destroyed the Drama Theatre. A place where more than a thousand people found refuge. We will never forgive this,” the Mariupol City Council said in a Telegram post.

Days before the apparent attack satellite images — shared by private company Maxar — clearly showed the words “DETI” — or children in Russian — etched out in the ground on either side of the building.

Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko called the attack a “horrifying tragedy.”

“People were hiding there. And some said they were lucky to survive, but unfortunately not all were lucky,” he said in a video message.

“The only word to describe what has happened today is genocide, genocide of our nation, our Ukrainian people. But I am confident that the day will come when our beautiful city of Mariupol will rise out of the ruins again.”

Russia’s defence ministry denied it had targeted the theatre, instead claiming that the building had been mined and blown up by members of Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch said that while it couldn’t rule out the “possibility of a Ukrainian military target in the area of the theatre… we do know that the theatre had been housing at least 500 civilians.”

“This raises serious concerns about what the intended target was in a city where civilians have already been under siege for days and telecommunications, power, water, and heating have been almost completely cut off,” said Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at the rights watchdog.

Zelenskyy address

In an address to the US Congress, Zelensky invoked Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 attacks and Martin Luther King Jr as he showed lawmakers a video of the wrenching effect of three weeks of Russian attacks.

Zelensky, dressed in military green, demanded Washington and its NATO allies impose a no-fly zone, so that “Russia would not be able to terrorize our free cities.”

Switching to English, Zelensky addressed Biden directly, saying: “I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”

Biden and NATO have resisted Zelensky’s pleas for direct involvement against nuclear-armed Russia, warning it could lead to World War Three — though the Ukrainian leader told NBC that “may have already started.”

But on Wednesday Biden announced the United States’ latest package of new weapons aid to Ukraine added up to $1 billion and that the US would help the ex-Soviet state acquire longer-range anti-aircraft weapons.

The US president also stepped up his condemnation of the Russian leader, describing him as a “war criminal.”

The Kremlin called the comment “unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world.”

Britain’s diplomatic mission to the UN also tweeted that Russia is committing “war crimes and targeting civilians” in Ukraine, after the British government requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting over the deteriorating humanitarian situation there.

“Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine is a threat to us all,” it posted Wednesday, saying the request was made with the US, France, Albania, Norway and Ireland.

Putin at a televised government meeting insisted the invasion was “developing successfully,” adding “we will not allow Ukraine to serve as a springboard for aggressive actions against Russia.”

As his government accelerated a crackdown that saw at least a dozen media websites blocked Wednesday, Putin claimed that the West sought to divide Russian society, railing against a “fifth column” that was “mentally” in the West.

“Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from traitors and just spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouth,” he said.

He also condemned western sanctions against his regime that have pushed Russia close to a default on its foreign debts as “economic blitzkrieg”.

© AFP 2022