Russia Launched 40 Attacks On Ukraine In One Day, Some Against Civilians

About 40 Russian strikes were launched against Ukraine Tuesday, with some of them aimed at civilian targets, according to the Ukrainian military.

Russia carried out 23 MLRS (multiple launch rocket system) attacks and 13 air strikes that day, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement.

Four missile strikes were also launched Tuesday, two of which were allegedly against a civilian target in the city of Kramatorsk in Ukraine's partially occupied Donetsk province.

"Having no major achievements on the battlefield, the enemy targets peaceful settlements. The Russian aggressor continues to destroy infrastructure and civilian residences, in violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, the laws and principles of war," the statement from Ukraine's military staff read.

The "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity [and] carried out unlawfully and wantonly" is considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Russia's most recent wave of attacks came as the death toll from a previous Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro rose to 45.

The claimed casualty count would put the strike among the deadliest attacks on Ukrainian civilians since before the summer of 2022, according to the Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Dnipro strike, saying that "attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law," Stephanie Tremblay, an associate spokesperson for the secretary-general, said Monday.

Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the strike and others like it "inhumane aggression" because it directly targeted civilians.

"There will be no impunity for these crimes," he said Sunday.

When asked about the strike Monday, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that the Russian military does not target residential buildings, the Associated Press reported.

Peskov also suggested that the apartment building in Dnipro was hit as a result of Ukrainian air defense actions.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), also known as the U.N. Human Rights Office, has repeatedly acknowledged Russia's apparent deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

In Monday's report that claimed a total of 7,031 civilians have been killed in the conflict, the OHCHR noted that "most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects, including shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes."