Russia Allegedly Bombed A Disabled Care Home Near The City Of Kharkiv

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Russia has today blown up a disabled care home near the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials have said, as Vladimir Putin’s troops stoop to a new low just 48 hours after shelling women as they gave birth in a maternity hospital.

Oleg Sinegubov, an official from Kharkiv which has been under siege by Russian forces for days, accused Putin’s men of committing a ‘war crime’ by launching airstrikes against the facility in the town of Oskil which had 330 residents inside at the time the bombs hit.

Sinegubov said 63 care home residents have since been evacuated, but could not give an update on the other 267. Ten of those living at the home require wheelchairs, he said, while another 50 have reduced mobility. Ihor Terekhov, mayor of the city, said another 48 schools have been destroyed by Russian missiles.

Just 48 hours before the care home was destroyed, Russian jets had bombed a maternity hospital in the southern city of Mariupol as women gave birth inside. The Kremlin has sought to paint those wounded in the attack as ‘crisis actors’ as part of a vile propaganda attempt to dismiss allegations its troops are attacking women and children.

Ukraine says Russian attacks have now killed more civilians than soldiers – without giving an exact figure for either – as the Kremlin’s generals pivot from shock-and-awe-style precision strikes to ‘medieval’ siege warfare. Dnipro, hundreds of miles to the south of Kharkiv, was hit by three strikes early Friday that damaged a kindergarten, a civilian apartment block, and a shoe factory – killing at least one person.

But Ukrainian forces continue to fight back, saying successful counter-attacks around the northern city of Chernihiv has recaptured five villages after Russian units took such heavy casualties that they were no longer able to attack effectively. It comes after another successful counter-attack in the same region on Thursday, and a counter-attack to the west of Kyiv which ground a Russian offensive to a halt.

Meanwhile, footage showed a Russian Mi-8 helicopter being downed earlier this week, as western-supplied anti-aircraft missiles continue to inflict a heavy toll on Putin’s air forces. It is unclear exactly when or where the footage was taken, though it was first posted to TikTok two days ago before circulating widely today.

Chernihiv is located around 80 miles to the north of Kyiv, where attacks are also underway today in an effort to surround the capital and subject it to the kind of siege already underway elsewhere. Satellite images revealed a 40-mile ‘death convoy’ that had previously clogged up highways nearby is now moving into attack positions.

Ukraine believes the capital – which is currently home to around 2million people – could soon be surrounded, after which it faces the same punishing fate meted out to the cities of Mariupol, which has been without water or power for 11 days, Kharkiv, and Sumy, where thousands of civilians have been killed.

Putin’s men are now facing a long and bloody mission to try and take the capital, which is thought to be the main target of their ‘special military operation’ – with the goal being to topple the government and install a puppet regime friendly to Moscow.

Russia has convened a UN security council meeting today to discuss what it claims are threats from Ukrainian chemical weapons. Should Russia decide to deploy WMDs, it is unclear where the attack would take place.

Moscow is officially committed to destroying its chemical weapons stockpiles under various international treaties and has not used the weapons in combat for decades. The Soviets were last accused of using them during the invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

However, the Kremlin is known to have maintained an illegal chemical weapons program which it has used to attack political opponents. Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, was used in the failed assassination attempt on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK in 2018. It was also used in a failed attack on Alexei Navalny in 2020.

Bashar al-Assad’s forces, fighting alongside Russia, used chemical weapons on civilian targets during his campaign to re-take Syria after the civil war – most notably in Ghouta in 2013 and Khan Shakhoun in 2017.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, giving a late-night address to his people on Thursday, confessed to fears that Russia itself is now preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine – after Moscow accused the Ukrainian government of preparing such an attack.

‘We have found if you want to find out Russia’s plans, you should look at what Russia is accusing others of,’ he said, pointing out that ahead of Putin giving the order to invade Ukraine, the Kremlin accused Ukraine of preparing an attack against Russia.

‘We’re the ones being blamed as if we’ve attacked a peaceful Russia. And what now,’ he asked in an emotional late-night address. ‘What does it mean, that we’re being accused of preparing chemical attacks? Have you decided to conduct a dechemicalisation of Ukraine? With what? With ammonia? With phosphorus?

‘What else have you prepared for us? What do you plan to hit with chemical weapons? A maternity hospital in Maripul? A church in Kharkiv? A children’s hospital?’