UN, G7 decry Russian attack on Ukraine as possible war crime

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Russian forces showered Ukraine with more missiles and munition-carrying drones Tuesday after widespread strikes killed at least 19 people in an attack the U.N. human rights office described as particularly shocking and amounting to potential war crimes.

Air raid warnings sounded throughout the country for a second straight morning as Ukrainian officials advised residents to conserve energy and stock up on water. Strikes in the capital and 12 other regions Monday caused widespread power outages and pierced the relative calm that had returned to Kyiv and many other cities far from the wars front lines.

It brings anger, not fear, Kyiv resident Volodymyr Vasylenko, 67, said as crews worked to restore traffic lights and clear debris from the citys streets. We already got used to this. And we will keep fighting.

The leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers condemned the bombardment and said they would stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes. Their pledge flew in the face of Russian warnings that Western assistance would prolong the war and the pain of Ukraines people. ADVERTISEMENT

Russia launched the widespread attacks in retaliation for a weekend explosion that damaged a bridge linking the country to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged the Ukrainian special services masterminded the Saturday attack on the Kerch Bridge. Russia-Ukraine warLive Updates: Russia-Ukraine WarKremlin war hawks demand more devastating strikes on UkraineAnalysts: Russian missiles seek to levy pain, could backfirePoll: Majority in US see relations with adversaries souring

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the G-7 leaders during a virtual meeting Tuesday to hit Russias energy sector with tougher sanctions and said, There can be no dialogue with this leader of Russia, who has no future.

Now, one person is blocking peace and this person is in Moscow, Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian officials said the previous days diffuse strikes on power plants and civilian areas made no practical military sense. However, Putins supporters had urged the Kremlin for weeks to take more drastic steps in Ukraine and actively criticized the Russian military for a series of embarrassing battlefield setbacks.

Pro-Kremlin pundits lauded Mondays attack as an appropriate and long-awaited response to Kyivs recently successful counteroffensives, and many of them argued that Moscow should keep up the intensity in order to win a war now in its eighth month. ADVERTISEMENT

The bombardment Tuesday struck both energy infrastructure and civilian areas, just as Mondays attacks did. One person was killed when 12 missiles slammed into public facilities in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, setting off a large fire, the State Emergency Service said. A local official said the missiles hit a school, residential buildings and medical facilities.

Energy facilities in the western Lviv and Vinnitsya regions also took hits. Although officials said Ukrainian forces shot down an inbound Russian missile before it reached Kyiv, the capital region experienced rolling power outages as a result of the previous days deadly strikes.

The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, urged residents to remain in bomb shelters as there are enough missiles still in the air.ADVERTISEMENT

The State Emergency Service said 19 people died and 105 people were wounded in Mondays strikes. At least five of the victims were in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. More than 300 cities and towns lost power, from the capital to Lviv on the border with Poland.

Beside the usual sirens, a new type of loud alarm that blared automatically from mobile phones jolted Kyiv residents early Tuesday. A text message warning of the possibility of missile strikes accompanied the caustic-sounding alert.

A spokesperson for the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that strikes on civilian objects, including infrastructure such as power plants, could qualify as a war crime.

Damage to key power stations and lines ahead of the upcoming winter raises further concerns for the protection of civilians and in particular the impact on vulnerable populations, Ravina Shamdasani told reporters at a U.N. briefing in Geneva. Attacks targeting civilians and objects indispensable to the survival of civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law.ADVERTISEMENT

As Ukrainian forces grew increasingly bold following a series of counteroffensive successes, a cornered Kremlin ratcheted up Cold War-era rhetoric in the last month and fanned concerns it might broaden the war and use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed the issue Tuesday, saying Moscow would only resort to that if the Russian state faced imminent destruction. Speaking on state TV, he accused the West of encouraging false speculation about the Kremlins intentions.

Russias nuclear doctrine envisions exclusively retaliatory measures intended to prevent the destruction of the Russian Federation as a result of direct nuclear strikes or the use of other weapons that raise the threat for the very existence of the Russian state, Lavrov said.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the 30-nation military alliance would hold long-planned exercises next week to test the state of readiness of its nuclear capabilities.ADVERTISEMENT

The exercise, dubbed Steadfast Noon, is held annually. It involves fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads but does not any live bombs. Conventional jets, and surveillance and refueling aircraft routinely take part.

Asked whether it was the wrong time for such an exercise, Stoltenberg replied: It would send a very wrong signal now, if we suddenly cancelled a routine, long-time planned exercise because of the war in Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said Russian President Vladimir Putins nuclear rhetoric over the war in Ukraine is irresponsible, and he said that Russia knows that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.

NATO as an organization does not possess any nuclear weapons. They remain under the control of three member countries the United States, the U.K. and France.

Those countries make up the G-7 along with Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the European Union. In their statement after hearing from Zelenskyy, the G-7 leaders said they were undeterred and steadfast in our commitment to providing the support Ukraine needs to uphold its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

We will hold President (Vladimir) Putin and those responsible to account for this weeks strikes, saying indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilian populations constitute a war crime.

The pledge appeared to come in response to Kremlin warnings that Western military assistance, including training Ukrainian soldiers in NATO countries and feeding real-time satellite data to target Russian forces, increasingly made Ukraines allies parties to the conflict.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said continued U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine would prolong the fighting and inflict more damage on the country without changing Russias objectives.

As Russian forces pounded three districts around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant overnight, Ukraines state nuclear operator said Russian forces kidnapped the plants deputy human resources director, Valeriy Martyniuk.

Russians previously detained plant General Director Ihor Murashow and released him following pressure from International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi.

Grossi, who met with Putin in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, urged the Russian leader to agree to establish a safety and security protection zone around the Russian-occupied plant to prevent shelling at and near the site from causing a radiation disaster.

Now, more than ever, during these extremely difficult times, a protection zone must be established around the ZNPP. We cant afford to lose any more time, Grossi said in a statement.

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Yuras Karmanau inTallinn, Estonia, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed reporting.

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