KIEV, Ukraine – Russia stepped up its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine on Wednesday, killing students and other civilians, in a brutal continuation of high-level diplomatic missions’ duels to bring peace after 13 months of war.
“Russia is shelling town with bestial ferocity,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a Telegram post accompanying a video showing what he said was a Russian rocket striking a nine-story apartment constructing on a busy street within the southeastern city of Zaporizhia. “Residential areas where unusual people and children live are under fire.”
At the least one person was killed within the attack shown within the Zaporozhye video, apparently captured by closed-circuit television cameras.
Elsewhere, Moscow’s forces launched exploding drones before dawn, killing at the least eight people in or near a dormitory near Kiev.
Ukrainian media showed several angles of the shell hitting an apartment constructing across the road from a shopping mall in Zaporizhia, producing an enormous plume of gray and black smoke, with bits of concrete flying into the air as cars passed.
![A high-rise apartment building damaged after being hit by a Russian missile in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081537474031.jpg?w=1024)
Videos showed the brutal aftermath of the attack: charred apartments, flames and smoke coming from several floors of buildings, and piles of broken concrete and shards of glass on the bottom.
Two children are among the many injured, said Anatoly Kurtiev, secretary of the Zaporizhia City Council, adding that 25 people required hospital treatment, three of them in a critical condition.
Town of Zaporozhye is about 60 miles from the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the most important in Europe, which was put in a state of emergency through the war and shut down for a lot of months.
![Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian soldiers hold the flag of a military unit near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081513378047.jpg?w=1024)
The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency said the ability plant suffered one other lack of its backup external power source.
Its six reactors still need energy to chill their nuclear fuel and relied only on their predominant source on Wednesday, the IAEA said.
Russia has denied targeting residential areas, regardless that artillery and rocket attacks hit residential buildings and civilian infrastructure on a each day basis.
![Rescue personnel work at the scene after a drone attack in the city of Rzhyshchiv, Kiev region, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081391030824.jpg?w=1024)
Russian officials blame Ukraine’s air defenses for a number of the deadliest attacks on housing, saying deploying air defense systems in residential areas puts civilians in danger.
Russia also sometimes claims that Ukraine hides military equipment and personnel in civilian buildings.
The war that Russia began on February 24, 2022, has evolved in two predominant directions: a frontline mainly in eastern Ukraine, centered around town of Bakhmut, and periodic Russian missile and drone strikes across the country.
![Rescue personnel work at the scene after a drone attack in the city of Rzhyshchiv, Kiev region, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081318917818-1.jpg?w=1024)
As well as, periodic – though unconfirmed – Ukrainian sabotage attacks were carried out across the border with Russia.
Throughout the winter, fighting on the front lines largely stalled, and with more favorable spring weather either side expected major offensives.
Earlier on Wednesday, a drone strike damaged a highschool and two dormitories within the town of Rzyszczów, south of the Ukrainian capital, officials said.
It was not clear on the time how many individuals were within the dormitories.
![A high-rise apartment building hit by a missile burns in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081437961286.jpg?w=686)
In keeping with regional police chief Andriy Nebytov, among the many bodies recovered from the rubble on one floor was that of a 40-year-old man, who added that greater than 20 people were hospitalized.
The video showed what seemed to be bloody sneakers and a green ball on the bottom near a dilapidated constructing whose top floor had been ripped off on the corner.
The attacks took place because the dueling diplomatic missions were coming to an end.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida left Kiev after meeting with Zelensky to support Ukraine.
![A wounded Ukrainian soldier lies on a bed in a special medical bus during the evacuation of volunteers from the hospital orderlies organization in Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081701293535.jpg?w=1024)
Chinese leader Xi Jinping left Moscow after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Beijing’s peace proposal, which the West rejected as not starting.
No progress towards peace has been reported.
US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson noted the rapid turn of events.
“Only a day after Russia called for peace, Russia is attacking Ukrainian homes as a part of its brutal war,” she said in Washington. “What Russia is doing is appalling – and we’re committed to continuing to assist Ukraine defend against Russian aggression.”
![A police officer gestures to prevent a drone attack site from being photographed in the city of Rzhyshchiv, Kiev region, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081391048833.jpg?w=1024)
The drone barrage and other Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure have also drawn a scathing response from Zelensky.
“Greater than 20 Iranian murder drones plus missiles, quite a few shellings, and this is only one last night of Russian terror,” he tweeted in English. “Each time someone tries to listen to the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, one other order is issued for such criminal strikes.”
The Zaporozhye regional administration reported that two shells hit an apartment block, saying that Russia’s goal is “to scare the civilian population of this city of 1000’s”.
“There’s hell in Zaporozhye,” Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko wrote on Telegram, adding: “There are not any military facilities nearby.”
![Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (right) greet each other during a meeting in Kiev, Ukraine, March 21, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23080662010511-2.jpg?w=1024)
Vladimir Rogov, an official of the Moscow-appointed regional administration for the Russian-occupied a part of Zaporizhia Oblast, claimed without providing evidence that a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to intercept a Russian missile hit an apartment complex.
In other attacks, Ukraine’s air defense shot down 16 of the 21 drones launched by Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff reported.
In keeping with the military administration of town, eight were shot down near the capital.
Other drones hit the central-western province of Khmelnitsky.
![Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other before Chinese President Xi Jinping leaves for the Kremlin in Russia after lunch.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23080700649433.jpg?w=1024)
Also on Wednesday, Zelensky made one other in a series of visits to the battlefield, meeting with soldiers and officers within the eastern Donetsk region, stopping on the hospital to see wounded soldiers and presenting state awards to the defenders of Bakhmut, a devastated city that has change into a logo of Ukraine’s fierce resistance under threat of Russian encirclement, and for months has been the scene of the bloodiest and longest battles of the war.
Zelensky’s last known visit to the Bakhmut region took place in December. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian president also visited Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, which his forces recaptured from the Russians last September.
![Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a soldier pose for a photo after an award ceremony at a stand near Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, March 22, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AP23081521705599.jpg?w=1024)
In other studies:
— The Russian military repulsed an early Wednesday drone attack on the predominant port of Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, said Moscow-appointed city chief Mikhail Razvozhayev.
He said the navy destroyed three water drones, that Russian warships weren’t damaged, and that several civilian objects were damaged when the drones were hit and exploded.
The explosions broke windows in several buildings near the port.
No injuries reported. Ukrainian officials haven’t claimed responsibility for the attack.
—Three people were injured in a Russian missile attack on a monastery within the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Tuesday evening.
In keeping with the pinnacle of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak, two out of 4 missiles were shot down.
— Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, chaired by Putin, responded to an issue on his messaging app channel about whether the specter of nuclear conflict has decreased: “No, it has not decreased, it has increased. Every single day that Ukraine is supplied with foreign weapons brings the nuclear apocalypse closer.”
— Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance has agreed a $15.6 billion loan package with the International Monetary Fund to support the country’s economy, paralyzed by the invasion.
Ukrainian officials hope the cope with the IMF will encourage their allies to supply financial support.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a Washington House committee that her agency had implemented greater than 2,500 Russia-related sanctions and “degraded the Kremlin’s ability to switch greater than 9,000 pieces of heavy military equipment it lost on the battlefield.”