Two people were killed and 30 others were wounded in a Russian attack on a hospital in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Friday, according to the Ukrainian emergency service, and Russian officials accused Ukraine of bombing civilian targets in two regions of southern Russia, while the founder of the Russian military company Wagner announced that his group was tasked with fighting on a new front.
Video footage showed a destroyed building rising smoke as rescue workers searched. Much of the upper floor was damaged in what appeared to be a three-story building. A covered body was seen on a nearby road.
Dnipro governor says two children were among 30 injured in hospital attack (Anatolia)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack a crime against humanity, writing on Twitter: "Another (Russian) missile attack, another crime against humanity."
He said a mental health clinic and a veterinary clinic in Dnipro had been damaged, adding: "A lonely evil state can hit clinics. There can be no military purpose behind this. It's pure Russian terrorism."
Dnipro district governor Serhii Lisak said two children were among the injured, while three people believed to have been in the building when the missile hit him could not yet be reached.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry said it carried out a raid overnight on Ukrainian ammunition depots, and confirmed - as quoted by the Russian Information Agency - that the shelling affected all specified facilities.
In turn, the French Foreign Ministry condemned what it described as Russian strikes, which deliberately targeted civilian targets, including a hospital in Dnipro, and considered these actions a "flagrant violation of international humanitarian law" and constitute "war crimes."
Meanwhile, the founder of the Russian military company "Wagner" Yevgeny Prigozhin said that his forces were assigned to fight on a new front, and said "the homeland needs to be defended, so we were assigned to fight on a new front," without elaborating.
Attacks inside Russia
On the other hand, the governor of Russia's Belgorod region announced that a woman was injured in Ukrainian shelling of the village of Novaya Tavolganka in the region.
In this regard, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the summoning of senior US diplomats, in protest against US statements about the attacks inside Russia.
CNN quoted US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby as saying that the Biden administration confirmed in its talks with Ukraine that it does not support attacks on Russian soil, noting that it has received assurances from Ukrainians that they will respect the American wish.
Kirby stressed that the Biden administration does not want to use any U.S.-made equipment to attack Russian territory.
Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States was wrong to believe its presence in the Atlantic would help it maintain its presence against the risk of World War III.
Lavrov also discussed with Chinese envoy for Eurasian affairs Li Hui prospects for settling the conflict in Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Lavrov, during the meeting with Li Hui, who is visiting the Russian capital, highly valued Beijing's readiness to play a positive role in resolving the Ukrainian conflict.
Lavrov stressed Russia's commitment to a diplomatic and political solution to the Ukrainian conflict, but pointed to the Chinese envoy what he called the serious obstacles placed by the Ukrainian side and its Western sponsors to the resumption of peace talks.
On the other hand, Lavrov said that the United States is wrong to believe that its presence in the Atlantic will help it maintain its presence in the face of the risk of a third world war.
Warning of a war freeze
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned Russia against relying on freezing the war on Ukraine along the territory it occupied there.
"Russia must understand that it cannot be about making some kind of cold peace, for example by turning the current front line into a new 'border' between Russia and Ukraine," he told the German newspaper Kölner Stadt Anzeiger on Friday.
"This will not legitimize Putin's land theft campaign," he said, adding that "it is more about a just peace, and the precondition for this is the withdrawal of Russian troops."
F-16 fighter jets
Regarding the F-16 fighters, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said Ukraine needed about 16 F-48 fighter jets to retake Russian-occupied territory.
In this regard, two sources familiar with the matter said that the Netherlands is likely to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine after completing the training of Ukrainian pilots on these aircraft.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Dutch government had led discussions with U.S. officials in recent weeks to push U.S. President Joe Biden to approve the delivery of the planes to Ukraine.
Bloomberg news agency quoted one of the sources as saying that the Netherlands and Denmark are leading allied countries to prepare pilots with the support of Britain and Belgium, and that the Dutch government is already looking and discussing with its allies about plans for the possible deployment of the aircraft.
The Netherlands currently has 42 F-16 fighter jets, of which 24 are currently used by the Dutch military, and cannot be sent to Ukraine until mid-2024, and the remaining fighters are due to be sold to US air services company Draken International.