"I didn’t know Liza, but no person can go through this with calm," priest Vitalii Holoskevych said at the Transfiguration Cathedral in Vinnytsia. ‘’We know that evil cannot win."
Ukraine emergency services posted reports of the attack on Facebook, including a mention of Liza: "The little girl ... who was killed by the Russians today, became a ray of the sun. Sorry baby for not saving u."
The Ukraine military said the cruise missiles were fired from a submarine hundreds of miles away in the Black Sea. Two boys, 7 and 8, also died in the assault, officials said. About 200 people were injured, 80 were hospitalized.
Russian airstrikes are focused on Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine that is near the Black Sea coast between Russian-occupied Crimea and the Ukrainian port of Odesa. Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said the Russian missiles struck an industrial and infrastructure facility in the city, a key shipbuilding center in the estuary of the Southern Bug river. There was no immediate information about casualties.
The attacks are part of a larger effort by the Kremlin to shore up its positions near Crimea, we well as the Zaporizhzhia region in the north, according to the latest update from the British Defense Ministry on Sunday. At the same time, Ukrainian troops are pushing back.
"Ukrainian forces have been applying pressure on the Russian defensive line in Kherson Oblast for over a month now, and recent political statements from both Zelenskky and the Deputy Prime Minister have warned of forthcoming offense operations to force Russia out of the areas it currently controls," the ministry tweeted.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave “instructions to further intensify the actions of units in all operational areas, in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in the Donbas and other regions,” his ministry said Saturday.
Though Russia's campaign is focused on the eastern Donbas, attacks Saturday struck areas in the north and south of Ukraine as well. The country's second-largest city of Kharkiv saw heavy bombardment in recent days.
International doping authorities approved special exemptions for seven Ukrainian athletes, allowing them to compete in world championships though they hadn’t been tested enough in the lead-up to the competition due to the war in their country. The Athletics Integrity Unit ruled that the other 15 Ukrainians, along with 134 athletes from five other countries categorized as “high risk” because of poor testing protocols, were entered into the championships. No athletes from any of the countries are being excluded.
At the Olympics last year, 20 athletes were not allowed to participate under what’s known as “Rule 15,” which was designed to bring Ukraine, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and Belarus into compliance with global testing rules.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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