Russian missile kills three-month-old baby

Russian armed forces, set out for a full-scale attack on the southern east of Ukraine, bombed a missile in the city of Odessa, killing at least eight civilians, including a mother and her three-month-old baby. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russians ‘bastards,’ raging over the situation. Ukraine forces, who are fighting back at the steel mills in Mariupol, released a video of the women and children who have fled there. “We want to see sunlight again,” pleaded the children. In Bucha, near Kyiv, where Russians have committed atrocities, they have also put execution facilities and camps for children in place.

According to The Associated Press, two out of at least six cruise missiles fired over the Black Sea by Russia’s strategic bomber TU-95 attacked civilian housing and military facilities. This happened on the day before Easter Day, which the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates. Foreign press reported that Russian missiles had been dropped on Ukraine civilian houses while Holy Saturday service was held at the churches of Moscow.

Odessa local authorities said that a woman named Valerie Glodan and her three-month-old child were killed in the recent attack. “My dear ones, the Kingdom of Heaven! You are in our hearts,” wrote Valeria’s husband Yuri Glodan on his facebook account, alongside an uploaded family photo.

“A three-month old child died. The war began when this child was a month old, Try to grasp that. Bloody bastards — I have no other words,” said President Zelensky at a press conference held at a subway station in Kyiv.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Russian forces locked up civilians in a four-story building and tortured or killed them. “More than 130 people were locked up in the basement of the building, and we lived on the leftovers by Russian soldiers. The floor of the hallways had been covered with blood, while bottles of wine and beer consumed by Russian forces rolled by,” testified a survivor, who also said that a second story building nearby had been used as an execution facility. “People who were taken there were shot to death,” the survivor said. Photos of the location in which bullets were strewn across the floor were also disclosed.


Eun-Taek Lee nabi@donga.com