Senior Western officials charged their Russian counterparts with war crimes on Friday after Russian missiles hit a Ukrainian city far behind the front lines in an attack, according to Kiev officials, that killed at least 23 people.
Kraine said Thursday’s attack on Vinnytsia, a city of 370,000 inhabitants about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of the capital Kiev, was carried out with Kalibr cruise missiles launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russia a “terrorist” state, pushed for more sanctions against the Kremlin and said the death toll in Vinnytsia could rise.
“Unfortunately, this is not the final number. Debris clearing continues.
Dozens of people are reported missing. There are serious injuries (people) among those who have been hospitalized,” he said in a video address.
Zelensky told an international conference focused on prosecuting war crimes in Ukraine that the attack was on “an ordinary, peaceful city.”
“No other state in the world poses such a terrorist threat as Russia,” Zelensky said.
Russia reiterated that it will not target civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, saying its attack hit a military training facility. Reuters was unable to independently verify the accounts on the battlefield.
According to an official Ukrainian military website, Vinnytsia houses the command headquarters of the Ukrainian Air Force, a target Russia attempted to hit with cruise missiles in March, the Ukrainian Air Force said at the time.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said three children, including a four-year-old girl named Lisa, were killed in Thursday’s attack.
Another 71 people were hospitalized and 29 others went missing.
It posted a photo on its Telegram channel of a toy kitten, a toy dog and flowers lying in the grass.
“Little girl Lisa, who was killed by the Russians today, has become a ray of sunshine,” it reads.
The attack overshadowed the start of a G20 finance ministers meeting in Indonesia on Friday, where top US and Canadian officials accused Russian officials in attendance of atrocities.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen condemned Russia’s “cruel and unjust war” and said Russian financial officials had a shared responsibility.
“By starting this war, Russia is solely responsible for negative spillovers to the global economy, especially higher commodity prices,” she said.
Russian officials who attended the meeting “added to the horrific consequences of this war through their continued support for the Putin regime,” she added.
“You share responsibility for the innocent lives that have been lost and the ongoing human and economic toll the war is causing around the world,” she told Russian officials.
Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told Russian officials at the meeting that she held them personally responsible for “war crimes,” a Western official told Reuters.
As Russia continued its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the United States and more than 40 other countries agreed on Thursday to coordinate investigations into suspected war crimes.
The war in Ukraine has caused prices for grains, cooking oil, fuel and fertilizers to soar, sparking a global food crisis.
Negotiators hope a deal will be signed next week.
The United States took steps Thursday to facilitate the export of Russian food and fertilizers by reassuring banks, shipping and insurance companies that such transactions would not violate Washington’s sanctions against Moscow.
Enabling those Russian exports is a key part of efforts by the United Nations and Turkey to negotiate a package deal with Moscow that would unlock a blockade on the Black Sea port of Odessa to allow for shipments of Ukrainian grain.
The Kremlin has said Russia is ready to end what the West calls Moscow’s unprovoked war of aggression if Kiev agrees to its terms, including formal recognition of Russian control of Crimea, which has 2014 was annexed by Moscow, and the independence of two self-declared Russian-backed states in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it is unwilling to allow any territory and take back any land that has been forcibly lost.
The eastern Ukrainian town of Popasna that fell to Russian troops two months ago is now a ghost town with little sign of life.
A Reuters reporter who visited the city on Thursday found it nearly deserted, with nearly all the apartment buildings destroyed or badly damaged.
Former resident Vladimir Odarchenko stood in his damaged home, surveying the rubble that littered the floor.
“I have no idea what I’m going to do. Where to live? I don’t know,” he said.