Latest developments:
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Crews in Ukraine found a body Thursday in the rubble of a pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, bringing the death toll from a Russian missile attack on the site to 12 people.
Ukrainian authorities said the dead include three children, and that the attack injured another 60 people.
Ukraine’s counterintelligence service said Wednesday it arrested a man it accused of helping Russia direct the attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said those who help Russia “destroy life” deserve maximum punishment.
“Anyone in the world who does not understand that one cannot be an accomplice of a terrorist state must be held accountable by the entire international community,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. “The spotter is being charged with treason. The possible punishment is life imprisonment. Accomplices of a terrorist state must be treated as betrayers of humanity.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday his foreign ministry would send a note of protest to Russia after the strike in Kramatorsk injured “three defenseless Colombian civilians.”
Petro tweeted that Russia “violated the protocols of war.”
The restaurant was frequented by journalists, aid workers, and soldiers as well as local residents. The Security Service of Ukraine provided no evidence for its claim that the man filmed the restaurant and told the Russians about it.
Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated Russia’s claim that it does not target civilians.
The strike during dinnertime on Tuesday was one of several Russia launched on Ukrainian cities throughout the evening and into early Wednesday.
Kramatorsk is west of the front lines where fighting is taking place in Donetsk province in eastern Ukraine.
A Russian airstrike on the city’s railway station in April 2022 killed 63 people.
Ukraine also reported a Russian missile strike Tuesday in Kremenchuk, which came exactly a year after a Russian attack there killed at least 20 people at a shopping mall.
“Each such manifestation of terror proves over and over again to us and to the whole world that Russia deserves only one thing as a result of everything it has done — defeat and a tribunal, fair and legal trials against all Russian murderers and terrorists,” said Zelenskyy.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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