A Russian missile attack on a residential building in the city of Kryvyi Rih killed six people and wounded 73, Ukrainian officials said on Monday, as the Kremlin played down Sunday’s drone attack on Moscow.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described the latest strike against Kryvyi Rih – the industrial city where he grew up and where his parents continue to live – as an act of Russian terror.
Four people were also killed and 17 wounded in a day of intense Russian bombardment on the southern frontline city of Kherson. Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskiy’s office, said the attacks were on civilian neighbourhoods.
Zelenskiy posted on Telegram, with video from the scene in Kryvyi Rih, saying: “In recent days, the enemy has been stubbornly attacking cities, city centres, shelling civilian objects and housing. But this terror will not frighten us or break us. We are working and saving our people.”
Russia fired two ballistic missiles on Monday morning. One slammed into a residential building, completely destroying floors from the ninth to the fourth, and strewing debris. The dead included a mother and a daughter. Eight children were among the injured.
A second missile hit university and administrative buildings. More than 350 rescuers dug victims out of the rubble and doused flames, as part of a residential block collapsed. “My condolences to all those who have lost their loved ones. We are trying to save as many people as possible,” Zelenskiy wrote.
The devastation came as the Russian government shrugged off Sunday’s attack on an elite business district in the capital, Moscow.
Ukraine typically declines to claim responsibility for attacks on Russia or Russian-annexed Crimea, though Kyiv officials have frequently celebrated such incidents with cryptic or mocking remarks. And in an unusually direct warning to Russia, Zelenskiy in his overnight address on Sunday hinted at future attacks inside Russia.
“Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases. This is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process,” Zelenskiy said.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Moscow was not planning to raise the threat level in the city after the drone attacks.
“The security measures have already been strengthened. All possible measures are already being taken against the continuing danger of terrorist attacks on civilian targets and on the residential sector by the Kyiv regime,” Peskov said.
The attacks on Sunday marked at least the fourth time that unmanned aerial vehicles reached the Russian capital since May when two drones were shot over the Kremlin.
Images circulating on social media showed that one of the drones had ripped off part of the facade of a state of the art skyscraper in the IQ Quarter, which reportedly housed officials from Russia’s digital ministry.
But while the series of drone attacks have brought the once-distant war somewhat closer to home for many Muscovites, observers believe the strikes are unlikely to impact broader attitudes towards the war in the capital.
“Drone strikes do not influence how Russians look at the war and hardly sway Russians one way or another,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, based in Moscow. “The general attitude is, ‘well the drones fell, but not on me’.”
“Russians are not even afraid to go to Crimea, let alone [of] drones in Moscow,” Kolesnikov added, referring to the tens of thousands of Russians who go on holiday to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula despite repeated strikes on a bridge that connects Crimea to mainland Russia.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that many in Russia have preferred to turn a blind eye to the war in Ukraine. According to a poll published last week by the independent Russian pollster Levada, 40% of Russians do not actively follow the events in Ukraine, while only 23% of respondents said they “closely followed” the situation.
One possible explanation for the generally lax attitudes towards the drone strikes on Moscow is that they have largely hit empty business offices and not led to casualties.
“People choose to ignore the war as much as they can and just enjoy the summer weather,” a Moscow city official who frequently visited the targeted IQ Quarter tower told the Guardian. “I also just shrugged my shoulders and moved on. What is the point in worrying?” they added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Also on Monday, the Russian mercenary head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a voice message that his Wagner group was not currently recruiting fighters but was likely to do so in future.
There have been questions over Wagner’s future ever since Prigozhin launched a failed mutiny over a month ago. The warlord made a surprise appearance on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa summit last week, despite an agreement with the Kremlin that he went into exile in Belarus.
“As long as we don’t experience a shortage in personnel, we don’t plan to carry out a new recruitment,” a voice sounding like Prigozhin’s said in an audio message published on several Telegram channels linked to Wagner.
“As soon as the motherland would need to create a new additional group that would be able to defend the interests of our country … we will begin recruiting,” he said.
Prigozhin added that many of his Wagner mercenaries were currently resting following “very intense work”.
