Fatalities pile up amid Ukraine prison strike

Kyiv (AFP) — A Russian strike on a prison in central Ukraine overnight killed more than 16 people and wounded dozens others, Kyiv said Monday, after Washington pressured Russia to end its war.

The attack comes around the three-year anniversary of an attack on another detention facility in occupied Ukrainian territory that Kyiv blamed on Moscow and that was reported to have killed dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers.

It also comes just one day after United States President Donald Trump issued Moscow with a new deadline to end its grinding invasion of Ukraine — now in its fourth year — or face tough new sanctions.

Russia carried out eight strikes on the Zaporizhzhia region, hitting the prison, according to Ivan Fedorov, the head of the military administration.

He said 16 people were killed there and that another 35 were wounded in the attack that he said destroyed the facility and damaged homes nearby.

“Putin’s regime, which also issues threats against the United States through some of its mouthpieces, must face economic and military blows that strip it of the capacity to wage war,” Andriy Yermak, a senior aide to Ukraine’s president wrote on social media in response.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said the Zaporizhzhia attack was further evidence of Russian “war crimes.”

“People held in places of detention do not lose their right to life and protection,” he wrote on social media.

The Ukrainian air force said that Russia had launched 37 drones and two missiles overnight, adding that its air defense systems had downed 32 of the drones only.

People were also killed and more wounded in attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to regional government officials.

A missile strike on the town of Kamyanske killed two people, wounded five and damaged a hospital, Sergiy Lysak, head of the regional military administration said on Telegram.

Another person was killed and several wounded in an attack on the region’s Synelnykivsky district, he said.