A Ukrainian man rushed to his home outside the central city of Dnipro in hopes of rescuing his family, only to find his two-year-old daughter dead and wife seriously wounded as he helped pull them from the rubble of their apartment destroyed in one of Russia’s latest airstrikes of the war, authorities reported.
Writing on Telegram after the body of Liza was recovered, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that at least 500 Ukrainian children have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
The United Nations says that around 1000 other Ukrainian children have been wounded, and thousands of others have been forcibly deported to Russia.
Zelenskyy, who last Thursday had noted International Children’s Day, said “Russian weapons and hatred continue to take and destroy the lives of Ukrainian children every day,” adding that “many of them could have become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history.”
“We must hold out and win this war!” he said. “All of Ukraine, all our people, all our children, must be free from the Russian terror!”
Liza was killed when a Russian missile landed on Saturday night in a yard next to her apartment building while she was home with her mother, said Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk. The girl’s father rushed home from work.
“The father was on duty, and as I was told, he personally cleared the rubble and pulled out his wife and his daughter. Just imagine the scale of this tragedy,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, reporting on the rescue that lasted until early on Sunday. The girl’s mother was hospitalised under intensive care.
Zelenskyy said five children were among 25 people wounded in Saturday’s attack, which damaged two residential buildings.
The mother of one of the children sat amid broken concrete, twisted metal, children’s toys and clothes near her apartment building and described what happened.
“I was running from the electrical station across the traffic,” Alyona Serednyak recalled. “I was running home. My child was alone at home. We tried to pull my child from under the cage on the window.”
She said that they managed to free him and he’s now hospitalized in intensive care.
Russian drone and cruise missile strikes on Sunday targeted multiple areas of the country, including the capital, Kyiv.
The Ukrainian air force updated earlier figures and said air defences downed six of eight Shahed self-exploding drones and four of six cruise missiles fired.