Missile attack in Dnipro kills at least 45, injures 79 more

Zelensky urges Russians to stop their ‘cowardly silence’

Update: With more bodies being pulled from the rubble, President Zelensky announced on Tuesday that the death toll in the Dnipro attack has risen to 45 (including six children). At least 79 people were injured, as well.

According to the latest official data from the Dnipropetrovsk regional administration, 40 people have been killed due to the January 14 Russian missile strike on Dnipro, which resulted in the collapse of two sections of a nine-story building.

On the morning of January 16, the Interior Ministry of Ukraine reported that 36 people (including two children) had been killed and 75 more injured (including 15 children). Thirty-nine people have been rescued (including six children). Around 30 more people are still missing.

72 apartments were destroyed in the attack and 230 more were damaged, said the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional council Nikolay Lukashuk. According Lukashuk, by the morning of January 16, more than 7.4 thousand tons of debris had been removed from the scene. Rescuers have been looking for people for almost two days. More than 500 people and 140 vehicles have been involved in the search and rescue operation.

Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Russian people after the strike on Dnipro. In a video message following the 326th day of the war, released on January 15, the Ukrainian president switched from Ukrainian to Russian and spoke of Russians’ “cowardly silence.”

I want to say to everyone in Russia — and from Russia — who still hasn’t been able to say even a few words condemning this terrorism… Despite seeing and knowing everything perfect well…

Your cowardly silence, your attempt to “wait out” the things that are happening, will only end with these same terrorists coming for you, too, one day.

Evil is very sensitive to cowardice. Evil always remembers those who fear it or who try to bargain with it. And when it comes for you, there will be no one to protect you.

Russia denied any involvement in the attack on the apartment building in Dnipro. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, commenting during a Jan. 15 briefing on the strike on Ukraine, did not mention Dnipro. “On January 14, a missile strike was launched against Ukraine’s military control system and related energy facilities. All designated facilities were hit. The purpose of the strike has been achieved,” Konashenkov said without giving details.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a Jan. 16 briefing that the Russian armed forces were striking not residential buildings but “military targets, obvious or camouflaged.” “You yourself have seen the conclusion of some representatives of the Ukrainian side, which said that this tragedy was the result of a counter missile and air defense,” Dmitry Peskov said (quoted by Interfax).

Apparently, the Kremlin, without naming names, was referring to Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office. He said on January 14 that a Russian X-22 supersonic cruise missile could have been shot down by Ukraine’s air defense forces, after which it fell on a house in Dnipro. This statement was disseminated by many Russian media outlets, with some of them quoting only Arestovich’s statement, without mentioning the numerous deaths and casualties. The Ukrainian Air Force said that they had never shot down an X-22 during the Russian invasion. At first, Arestovich admitted that he had made inaccurate statements, but then he refused to apologize.

The Dnipro strike is the most devastating attack on a peaceful facility in Ukraine in six months - since July 9, 2022, when Russian forces struck the town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region. The strike completely collapsed two sections of a five-story residential building and damaged another five-story building. 48 people were killed, including one child, and at least 24 others were injured. The Russian Defense Ministry, commenting on what happened in Chasiv Yar, said that “more than three hundred nationalists were killed as a result of the strike.”

In wartime, new military information cannot always be promptly verified, even when presented by official sources. Please consider it critically.