Ukraine presented new evidence on Tuesday that it said proved that the main children’s hospital in Kyiv had been directly hit by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile.
“The experts’ conclusions are unequivocal – it was a direct strike,” the State Security Service (SBU) said on Telegram.
It shared images of a missile engine fragment that it said was found at the site. Analysis of the trajectory and nature of damage caused prove the was a direct strike, it added.
The interior ministry said on Tuesday that it had completed its search for survivors at the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital. Two adults, one of them a doctor, were killed and 32 people wounded. Eight children had been hospitalised, it said.
The Kremlin claimed on Tuesday that Ukrainian anti-missile fire, not Russian strikes, had hit the hospital on Monday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov provided no evidence to support the assertion, but told reporters: “I insist, we do not conduct strikes on civilian targets.”
Russia on Monday rained missiles on several cities across Ukraine, killing at least 41 civilians in the deadliest wave of airstrikes for months.
At the children’s hospital, the SBU said it recovered fragments of the rear part of a Russian Kh-101 Kalibr missile with a serial number, and a part of the guidance system.
The United Nations said on Tuesday there was a “high likelihood” that the children’s hospital suffered “a direct hit” from a Russian missile.
Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, called Monday’s strike “one of the most egregious attacks that we’ve seen since the onset of the full-scale invasion” in February 2022.
Peskov, at his daily briefing in Moscow, was asked how Russia could say it does not attack civilian targets after the tragedy at the hospital.
“I urge you to be guided by the statements of the Russian Ministry of Defence, which absolutely excludes that there were attacks on civilian targets and which states that we are talking about a falling anti-missile system,” he said.
“We continue to insist that we do not attack civilian targets. Strikes are carried out against critical infrastructure facilities, against military targets that are in one way or another related to the military potential of the regime.”
Many thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the course of the war since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. A much smaller number of civilians have been killed inside Russia and in parts of Ukraine that Russia controls and has claimed as its own.