Three children among 10 killed as missile hits pizza restaurant in Ukraine

Authorities have arrested a man they accused of helping Russia direct the missile strike.

Rescue workers are continuing to search the destroyed building’s rubble following the Tuesday evening attack on Kramatorsk which wounded a further 61 people, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs said.

Two sisters, both aged 14, died as result of the attack, the educational department of the Kramatorsk city council said.

“Russian missiles stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels,” it said in a Telegram post.

The other dead child was 17, according to prosecutor general Andrii Kostin.

The attack also damaged 18 multi-storey buildings, 65 houses, a number of schools, a shopping centre, an administrative building and a recreational building, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

The strike, and others elsewhere across Ukraine, indicated that the Kremlin is not easing its aerial onslaught despite turmoil caused by a short-lived armed uprising last weekend. There has also been no apparent military push by Ukraine to exploit that turmoil, though Kyiv has been tight-lipped about recent battlefield developments.

The Kremlin reeled from the weekend mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner private army of prison recruits and other mercenaries which has played a key role for Russia in Ukraine. The rebellion was the gravest threat so far to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.

Mr Prigozhin went into exile in neighbouring Belarus on Tuesday after Russia said he would not face charges for the revolt, but Mr Putin is trying to tarnish Mr Prigozhin’s reputation and perhaps accuse him of corruption, a Washington-based think tank said on Wednesday.

“Putin has likely decided that he cannot directly eliminate Prigozhin without making him a martyr at this time,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment.

Officials initially blamed the strike in Kramatorsk on an S-300 missile, a surface-to-air weapon that Russia’s forces have repurposed for loosely targeted strikes on cities, but the National Police later said Iskander short-range ballistic missiles were used.

Kramatorsk is a frontline city that houses the Ukrainian army’s regional headquarters. The pizza restaurant was frequented by journalists, aid workers and soldiers, as well as locals.

The Security Service of Ukraine said it had detained a man whom it suspects directed the strike on the restaurant, who is an employee of the local gas transportation company.

He filmed the restaurant for the Russians and informed them about its popularity, the Security Service said in a Telegram post.

It provided no evidence for its claim. Russia has insisted during the war that it does not aim at civilian targets, although its air strikes have killed many civilians.

Kramatorsk is located in Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claimed to annex last September but does not fully control. Russia has also occupied Crimea since 2015.

Ukrainian-held parts of the partially occupied provinces have been hit especially hard by Russian bombardment and are a key barrier to resolving the war.

The Kremlin demands that Kyiv recognise the annexations, while Kyiv has ruled out any talks with Russia until its troops pull back from all occupied territories.

Kyiv recently launched a much-anticipated counter-offensive to take back occupied territory.

Russia, meanwhile, has stepped up its air campaign in Ukraine while the fighting continues along the front line.

Russian forces on Monday and overnight also shelled 16 settlements in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, the Ukrainian presidential office reported.

It said that a 77-year-old civilian was killed in the frontline town of Orikhiv, and that Russian shelling wounded three people in a nearby village recently retaken by Kyiv.

Also, a Russian supersonic cruise missile hit a cluster of holiday homes in central Ukraine, sparking a fire which injured a child, the presidential office said.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis’ peace envoy, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, was to meet with an aide to President Putin, Yury Ushakov, in Moscow on Wednesday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the talks would include “possible ways of political-diplomatic settlement”.

Francis dispatched Cardinal Zuppi, a veteran of the Catholic Church’s peace initiatives, to Moscow in the hope of helping spur peace negotiations after his visit to Kyiv earlier this month.

At the Vatican on Wednesday, Francis again appealed for an end to the war, praying that Ukrainians “may soon find peace: There is so much suffering in Ukraine, let us not forget that”.