KYIV —
Russian strikes targeted energy infrastructure in the capital Kyiv on
Wednesday, the latest in a series of attacks that has caused nationwide
blackouts.
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The European
Parliament meanwhile recognized Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” over
its nine-month invasion of Ukraine and urged the 27-nation EU to follow suit.
Ukrainian emergency
services said the Russian rockets smashed into a hospital in Vilniansk, a town
in the southern
Zaporizhzhia region, that houses Europe’s largest nuclear power
plant under Russian control.
President Volodymyr
Zelensky denounced the strikes as Russian “terror and murder”.
“The two-story
building of the maternity ward was destroyed,” the emergency services said in a
statement, adding that there was a woman, baby and doctor in the building at
the time of the attack.
“The baby ... died.
The woman and doctor were rescued from the rubble,” they added. Nobody else was
trapped under the debris.
The
World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that recent systematic attacks on the energy grid
are causing severe disruptions at Ukrainian hospitals.
Russian strikes
were also targeting the Ukrainian capital Kyiv Wednesday, with the city’s mayor
Vitali Klitschko saying important infrastructure had been hit.
The western city of
Lviv was also left without power after being targeted by strikes, the mayor
said.
The WHO said this
week it had recorded more than 700 attacks on Ukraine’s health facilities since
Russia’s invasion began.
“Continued attacks
on health and energy infrastructure mean hundreds of hospitals and healthcare
facilities are no longer fully operational,” Hans Kluge, regional director for
Europe at the UN’s health body, told reporters.
Russia has
systematically targeted
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing severe damage
ahead of winter, which Kluge said “is already having knock-out effects on the
health system and on the people’s health”.
‘Terrorist state’
The move by the European legislators to recognize Russia as a “state
sponsor of terrorism” is a symbolic political step with no legal consequences.
Kyiv has for months
called on the international community to declare Russia a “terrorist state,”
and the Strasbourg parliament’s decision will likely anger Moscow.
“The deliberate
attacks and atrocities carried out by the
Russian Federation against the
civilian population of Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and
other serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law
amount to acts of terror,” a resolution approved by EU lawmakers said.
Ukraine praised the
decision.
“Russia must be isolated
at all levels and held accountable in order to end its long-standing policy of
terrorism in Ukraine and across the globe,” Zelensky said.
Separately, Ukraine’s
security service announced that it had seized “pro-Russian literature” and
cash and interrogated dozens during raids of several Orthodox monasteries that
spurred a backlash from the Kremlin.
The raided
locations included the 11th century Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv, a
UNESCO Heritage site.
The SBU said it had
probed 850 people including Russian and Ukrainian citizens and that “more than
50 underwent in-depth counterintelligence interviews”.
“Some of them
presented passports and Soviet-era military IDs or did not have original
documents at all, but only copies of them, or had Ukrainian passports with
indications of forgery or damage,” the SBU said.
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