A newborn baby has become one of the youngest victims of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine after Russian shells hit a maternity ward in the south of the country, Ukrainian officials said.
The boy’s mother and the attending doctor had been rescued, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.
“Grief fills our hearts: a baby who has just appeared in the world has been killed,” Oleksandr Starukh, the regional governor of Zaporizhzhia, said in a post on his Telegram channel.
It added that the “small maternity ward” had been hit by “huge missiles”.
The two-story building “was destroyed,” the emergency service said in a separate post on its Telegram.
“At the time, there was a woman in labor with a newborn baby, as well as a doctor,” the post said.
The attack came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised that special “invincibility centers” would be set up across his country to provide electricity, heat, water, internet, mobile phone connections and a pharmacy, free of charge and for the whole day.
“If there are massive Russian attacks again and it is understood that the power supply cannot be restored in a few hours, the ‘Invincibility Points’ work will be activated,” Zelenskyy said in his late-night video speech.
“There are all the basic services: electricity, mobile communication and Internet, heating, water and first aid kit. Absolutely free and 24 hours a day, ”she added.
Zelenskyy’s announcement came after the first snow of winter fell across much of the country last week amid Russian attacks that have devastated Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
Nine months after the invasion that has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions more and battered the world economy, authorities are warning of power outages that could affect millions until the end of March.
Average winter temperatures in Ukraine hover around 27 degrees Fahrenheit and are expected to reach minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the country in the coming months, the World Health Organization said.
“This winter will threaten the lives of millions of people in Ukraine,” said Dr. Hans Henri Kluge, regional director for Europe at the United Nations health agency.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that some 8,500 generator sets are being imported into Ukraine daily.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in the east, where Russia is pushing an offensive along a stretch of the front west of the city of Donetsk that has been in the hands of its proxies since 2014.
The Donetsk region has been the scene of fierce attacks and constant shelling for the past 24 hours, Zelenskyy said.
In Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed to Ukraine in 2014, Russian air defenses were activated and two drone strikes were repelled on Tuesday, including one targeting a power plant near Sevastopol, the governor-installed said. Russia, Mikhail Razvozhaev in a Telegram. mail.
Sevastopol is the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
