KYIV: Ukraine on Saturday mourned 18 people, including nine children, killed in a Russian ballistic missile strike on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rig, as the region’s governor said it was “the kind of pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”
Sixty-one people were wounded, 12 of them children, Dnipropetrovsk governor Sergiy Lysak said after emergency operations were completed overnight.
The missile attack on Friday, one of the deadliest in recent weeks, struck a residential area near a children’s playground, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of Kryvyi Rig’s military administration.
“On 7, 8 and 9 April, days of mourning will be declared in Kryvyi Rig for those killed as a result of yesterday’s terrorist attacks on our city by the killer country,” he said.
“Children, families, the elderly... Ballistic missile and shakedown attacks on residential areas and playgrounds... This is nothing less than a mass murder of civilians.”
Pictures circulated by rescue services showed several bodies, one stretched out near a playground swing.
“This is the kind of pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy,” Lysak said.
Russia’s defense ministry said it “delivered a precision strike with a high-explosive missile on a restaurant” in the city “where commanders of formations and Western instructors were meeting.”
It said its air defense units had intercepted and destroyed 49 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The commander of the Ukrainian army retorted that Moscow was “trying to cover up its cynical crime” and “spreading false information” about the target of the strike.
He accused Russia of “war crimes.”
The Ukrainian air force said on Saturday Russia had launched 92 drones across Ukraine overnight.
Fifty one had been shot down and around 30 others had landed without causing damage.
US President Donald Trump, who said during his re-election campaign he could end the three-year conflict within days, is pushing the two sides to agree a ceasefire but his administration has failed to broker an accord acceptable to both.
Zelensky said the missile attack showed Russia had no interest in stopping its full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022.
“There is only one reason why this continues — Russia does not want a ceasefire and we see it. The whole world sees it,” he said.
“The missile struck an area near residential buildings, a playground and ordinary streets.
“People who are capable of that kind of thing aren’t human, They are bastards,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky on Friday met the heads of the British and French military in Kyiv to discuss a plan by London and Paris to send a “reassurance” force to Ukraine if and when a peace deal is reached.
This is one of the latest efforts by European leaders to agree a coordinated policy after Trump sidelined them and opened direct talks with the Kremlin.
“Together, we want to guarantee a lasting and solid peace in Ukraine, an essential condition for the security of the European continent,” Thierry Burkhard, chief of the French defense staff, said on X on Saturday.
Burkhard and his British counterpart, Tony Radakin, also met their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksandr Syrsky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
Kryvyi Rig, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the front line, and has regularly been targeted by Russian drones and missiles.
Zelensky was born in the industrial city, which had a pre-war population of around 600,000 people.
Ukraine mourns 18 killed in Russian missile strike
https://arab.news/vkv3e
Ukraine mourns 18 killed in Russian missile strike
- Sixty-one people were wounded, 12 of them children, Dnipropetrovsk governor Sergiy Lysak said
US bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online
WASHINGTON: The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure US tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.
The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “radical” activists and “weaponized” nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio posted on X. “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. They include the leaders of organizations that address digital hate and a former European Union commissioner who clashed with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump.
Rubio’s statement said they advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and US companies, which he said created “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US
The action to bar them from the US is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions.
The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs.
Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep Internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.
She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.
Breton responded Tuesday on X by noting that all 27 EU members voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. “To our American friends: ‘Censorship isn’t where you think it is,’” he wrote.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France condemns the visa restrictions on Breton and the four others. Also posting on X, he said the DSA was adopted to ensure that “what is illegal offline is also illegal online.” He said it “has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way concerns the United States.”
Most Europeans are covered by the Visa Waiver Program, which means they don’t necessarily need visas to come into the country. They do, however, need to complete an online application prior to arrival under a system run by the Department of Homeland Security, so it is possible that at least some of these five people have been flagged to DHS, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not publicly released.
Other visa restriction policies were announced this year, along with bans targeting foreign visitors from certain African and Middle Eastern countries and the Palestinian Authority. Visitors from some countries could be required to post a financial bond when applying for a visa.
