Kiev says Moscow used S-300 air defense missiles to attack Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and hit the city’s museum.
A Russian missile has hit a museum building in a Ukrainian city, killing at least two people and injuring 10 others, as part of a barrage of attacks as Ukraine prepares its troops for an expected spring counter-offensive.
Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that the Russian army used S-300 air defense missiles to attack Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and hit the museum of local history in the city center. The Russian army has repeatedly used S-300s, which Ukrainian air defenses cannot intercept, to attack ground targets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video from the site showing the destroyed building and aid workers examining the damage.
“The terrorist country is doing everything it can to destroy us completely,” Zelensky said. “Our history, our culture, our people. Killing Ukrainians with absolutely barbaric methods.”
Zelenskyy said a museum worker was killed, and Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov later reported that the body of another victim had been pulled from under the rubble.
Syniehubov said three people were hospitalized and seven suffered minor injuries.
Kupiansk was captured by Russian forces in the early stages of the Russian invasion, but was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in a surprise counter-offensive in September, driving the Russians out of wide swathes of the Kharkiv region.
A woman was also killed in Russian shelling of the town of Dvorichna, near Kupiansk, and two civilians were killed in the eastern region of Donetsk, according to Ukraine’s presidential office.
The Ukrainian army is now preparing for another massive counter-offensive, relying on the latest supplies of Western main battle tanks and other weapons and fresh troops trained in the West.
Zelenskyy met with top military leaders on Tuesday to discuss the situation on the battlefield, as well as the prospects for new weapons stockpiles and the preparation of troops.
“We must speed up the pace of arms delivery because every day of delay costs our soldiers’ lives,” Zelenskyy said on Facebook.
Ukraine’s chief of military intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, described the planned counter-offensive in an interview with RBC-Ukraine released Monday as a “milestone battle in Ukraine’s modern history” that would see the country “reclaim key territories “.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday allowing Moscow to temporarily take control of foreign assets if Russian assets are seized abroad, Tass news agency reported.
Tass said the decree mentioned Uniper SE’s Russian division and Fortum Oyj’s assets in Finland.