Russia Ukraine news latest: Putin’s latest atrocity leaves at least 12 people including a child dead

At least 12 people – including a child – are dead after Russian rockets hit another Ukrainian city in Putin’s latest atrocity against civilians.

Three missiles slammed into an office block and nearby residential buildings in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsya – 450 miles from the Donbas frontline – early Thursday.

Videos show fires burning in a car park near the building with an empty baby’s pram lying in the street as medics load the wounded into ambulances.

President Zelensky branded Russia ‘a terrorist country’ as he condemned the attack, which comes off the back of repeated strikes on civilian areas across the country. 

Three Russian missiles hit an office block in the centre of Vinnytsya today, a Ukrainian city hundreds of miles from the current frontlines

Civilians – including a child – are among those killed in the Russian strike, which is the latest to hit residential areas

Firemen hep to extinguish vehicles blown up when Russian missiles struck the city of Vinnytsya, in the west of Ukraine, on Thursday

The badly-damaged remains of an office building in the centre of Vinnytsya are pictured after it was hit by Russian missiles early Thursday

Vinnytsya,450 miles went of the Donbas front line, is just the latest city to be hit in a series of Russian air strikes targeting civilians

‘Vinnytsya. Rocket strikes in the city centre. There are wounded and dead, among them a small child,’ he wrote on Instagram.

‘Every day, Russia destroys the civilian population, kills Ukrainian children, directs rockets at civilian objects where there is nothing military.

‘What is this, if not an open act of terrorism? Inhumans. A killer country. A terrorist country.’ 

Russia has stepped up its attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine as its offensive in the east has stalled following the seizure of two key cities in late June and early July.

Ukraine says Putin’s men are taking an ‘operation pause’ before pushing on with their offensive, but that has not stopped them raining down death from a distance.

The first such strike obliterated the Kremenchuk mall on June 27, killing at least 20 people but leaving another 36 missing presumed dead.

Russia attempted to deny it had hit the mall – suggesting it had fired at nearby military targets including a factory and railway – and that ‘collateral’ damage had been caused by a fire that spread to the shopping centre.

But CCTV footage clearly showed a Russian anti-ship missile, originally designed to take out US aircraft carriers, slamming into the building. 

The Vinnytsya strike is just the latest in a series of Russian bombings of civilian areas of Ukraine, that have left scores of people dead

Firefighters walk among the ruins of burned-out cars after Russia missile hit a Ukrainian office block in the city of Vinnytsya

Burned-out vehicles and debris from a nearby office building litter the streets in the centre of Vinnytsya after it was hit by Russian missiles

Ukrainian President Zelensky said Vinnytsya contains no military targets as he condemned Russian troops as ‘inhumane’ and ‘terrorists’

That was followed by a hit on an apartment block in Mykolaiv on June 29 that left at least eight people dead, and another in Odesa on July 1 that killed 18.

On July 9, Russia bombed an apartment block in the town of Chasiv Yar – killing at least 47 civilian in one of the single deadliest attacks on the innocent of the war.

The bombings hit two residential buildings in the Donbas town overnight, causing one of them to partially collapse and badly damaging the other. 

Rescue work is still ongoing, though hopes of finding survivors has all-but faded. The death toll is still being updated daily. 

Kharkiv was the next target, with a series of missile strikes in the early hours of July 11 obliterating a school and several other residential buildings.

At least six people – including a 17-year-old boy and his father – died in those blasts, with another 31 injured.

That was followed by today’s hit on the office block, which came even as Ukraine’s top war crimes prosecutor and European officials met to gather evidence for future war crimes trials.

With more than 20,000 war crimes investigations open and different countries heading teams, evidence needs to be credible and organised, officials said.

‘Just like a climate strategy and a COVID strategy, we need an accountability strategy,’ Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra told a meeting in The Hague.

Raw emotion emanating from stories of rape and murder were not enough to prosecute suspects, he added.

Russian forces have bombed Ukrainian cities to ruins and left behind bodies in the streets of towns and villages they occupied since invading in February.  

Ukraine says tens of thousands of civilians have died. Moscow denies deliberately targeting them.

There have also been some reports of Ukrainians mistreating Russian prisoners, though the vast majority of accusations documented by bodies such as the United Nations are of alleged atrocities committed by Russian invaders and their proxies.

‘As this meeting takes place, Russian forces continue to commit atrocities in Ukraine with harrowing intensity,’ said U.S. envoy Uzra Zeya, who attended the meeting.

‘With each day the war crimes mount: rape, torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, forced deportations, attacks on schools, hospitals, playgrounds, apartment buildings, grain silos, water and gas facilities.’

The European Union’s justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, noted that war crimes and genocide suspects were still at large from conflicts in places such as Rwanda, Darfur, Syria, Congo and the Balkans.

Countries trying to document crimes faced a ‘gigantic task, not least because it requires the collection and storage of evidence in the midst of a war’, he said.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan said there were reasons for hope because more than 40 states were seeking action on Ukraine through the court. The ICC has sent the largest field team in its 20 year history to investigate.

‘At a time like this, the law cannot be a spectator. The law cannot recline in comfort in The Hague … when it’s meant to protect and uphold certain principles that are essential for humanity.’

Russia withdrew its backing from the ICC in 2016 after the court referred to Moscow’s 2014 seizure and annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine as an armed conflict.

Host country the Netherlands hopes that Thursday’s meeting – the Ukraine Accountability Conference – agrees on evidence sharing, a prosecution strategy and providing international war crimes expertise to investigators on the ground.

Since the Feb. 24 invasion, Ukrainian authorities have so far convicted two Russian soldiers of war crimes.

Russia’s separatist proxies have held their own trials, including passing death sentences on two British fighters and a Moroccan in what Western countries consider sham proceedings.