Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has issued a public response to Monday’s deadly Russian drone attack on Ukraine.
38 were killed and at least 190 were injured in missile strikes across the country, including at Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital – Ukraine’s biggest paediatrics facility – in the capital Kyiv, according to figures from the BBC.
Via the official X account of the Prime Minister’s Office, Frederiksen posted in English:
“Bombing a children’s hospital is vile. I condemn the attacks across Ukraine and on children in the strongest possible way. Yet again, Putin shows his ruthlessness. We must continue to support Ukraine and their fight against Russian cruelty.”
Two were killed in the strike on the hospital, which specialises in cancer treatment and organ transplants.
Photos from the scene show citizens and first responders crawling up a landslide of indistinguishable grey debris to remove rubble and extract survivors from a smoking hole between buildings.
Others show young children hooked up to IV drips and monitors, sitting or standing outside the flattened facility, awaiting evacuation.
The deadliest strike was reported in the city of Kryvyi Rih, where 10 people have so far lost their lives, and at least 31 are reportedly injured, according to local authorities, writes Reuters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “brutal” and described his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as a “bloody criminal”.
Zelenskyy told media that Russia had launched over 40 missiles on Monday, damaging almost 100 buildings in Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitaly Klychko, told Reuters it was “one of the worst attacks” on the capital in two years.
Meanwhile, Russian officials said a power substation in the Rostov region bordering Ukraine had caught fire after overnight Ukrainian drone attacks.
The regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said four people had been killed and 20 injured in Ukrainian attacks over the past 24 hours.
On Tuesday, Russia repeated denials that it targeted the Kyiv hospital. It claims the hospital was hit by fragments of a Ukrainian air defence missile.
“We do not conduct strikes on civilian targets,” said President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Ukraine countered that it had found remnants of a Russian cruise missile in the hospital rubble.
