Russian rockets hit an office building in a city in central Ukraine on Thursday morning, killing at least 23, officials said, in the latest strike on a civilian target in Ukraine that did not appear to have a direct military objective. Another 90 people were wounded, half of them seriously, after three rockets hit the centre of Vinnytsia, according to Ukraine’s National Police. Three children were among 20 people killed in the attack on the provincial capital, which occurred at around 10:30am, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said. Videos released by the agency showed smoke pouring out of a multistorey building and fire crews dousing water on the smouldering husks of upturned vehicles. Zelensky condemned the attack.

“Every day, Russia destroys the civilian population, kills Ukrainian children, directs rockets at civilian objects,” he said. “What is this, if not an open act of terrorism?” After the explosions, frightened residents stood on the sidewalks, watching a coiling plume of black smoke rise from the city centre. People were scared, although the strikes “are familiar to us” now, Iryna Mykhailova, a nanny living in Vinnytsia, said by telephone.

Another witness, Raisa Ludanova, said, “I had no time to get scared because it was a sudden loud noise and a window in my room was blown off. ” Vinnytsia, which had a pre-war population of more than 370,000, lies west of the Dnipro river, hundreds of miles from the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the focus of Moscow’s military campaign in recent weeks.

The area has not seen significant attacks since early March, days after Russia’s invasion, when Russian cruise missiles struck an airport in the city. But the strike on Thursday fit a pattern of deadly Russian strikes on civilian targets. In the eastern village of Chasiv Yar, the State Emergency Service said that the death toll from a strike that hit an apartment complex over the weekend had risen to 48, making it one of the deadliest attacks on civilians.

(New York Times News Service)