Search for survivors ongoing after deadliest single attack on Ukrainian civilians in several months | CBC News

The death toll from a weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to 40, authorities said Monday, as Western analysts pointed to indications the Kremlin was preparing for a drawn-out war in Ukraine after almost 11 months of fighting.

About 1,700 people lived in the multi-storey building, and search and rescue crews have worked nonstop since Saturday’s strike to locate victims and survivors in the wreckage. The regional administration said 39 people have been rescued so far and 30 more remain missing. Authorities said at least 75 were wounded.

The reported death toll made it the deadliest single attack on Ukrainian civilians since before the summer, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. Residents said the apartment tower did not house any military facilities.

Oleksander Anyskevych said he was in his apartment when the missile struck.

“Boom — and that’s it. We saw that we were alive and that’s all,” Anyskevych said Monday as he went to the site to see his wrecked apartment.

WATCH | Precarious search and rescue effort ongoing:

Grim, dangerous work at site of missile hit in Ukraine

The CBC’s Chris Brown, in Dnipro, Ukraine, describes the dangerous work for rescue crews at the site of a devastating Russian missile hit.

He told The Associated Press that he knew people who died under the rubble. One of his son’s classmates lost her parents.

Dnipro residents took flowers, candles and toys to the ruins.

“All of us could be in that place,” local resident Iryna Skrypnyk said.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the strike, and others like it, “inhumane aggression” because it directly targeted civilians.

“There will be no impunity for these crimes,” he said in a tweet Sunday.

Asked about the strike Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military doesn’t target residential buildings and suggested the Dnipro building was hit as a result of Ukrainian air defence actions.

The strike on the building came amid a wider barrage of Russian cruise missiles across Ukraine. The Ukrainian military said Sunday that it did not have the means to intercept the type of Russian missile that hit the residential building in Dnipro.

Deadly incident in Kherson

Fierce fighting continued to rage Monday in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where military analysts have said both sides are likely suffering heavy troop casualties. No independent verification of developments was possible.

Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk province make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Russian President Vladimir Putin identified as a focus from the war’s outset. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv’s forces there since 2014.

The Russian and Belarusian air forces began a joint exercise Monday in Belarus, which borders Ukraine and served as a staging ground for Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.The drills are set to run through Feb. 1, the Belarusian Defence Ministry said. Russia has sent its warplanes to Belarus for the drills.

Elsewhere, Russian forces shelled the city of Kherson and the Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 14 others over the last 24 hours, regional Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych said. In the city of Kherson, the shelling damaged a hospital, a child disability centre, a shipyard, critical infrastructure and apartment buildings.

WATCH | Germany yet to sign off on re-exportation of tanks:

Canada, allies sending offensive weapons to Ukraine

Ukraine is getting advanced air defence systems from Canada and more armoured vehicles from other Western allies ahead of a widely anticipated Ukrainian offensive.

Russian forces struck the city of Zaporizhzhia, damaging industrial infrastructure and wounding five people, two of them children, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko reported.

Russian air defences downed seven drones Monday over the Black Sea near the port of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed head of Sevastopol, reported.

In other developments on Monday:

• Germany’s defence minister Christine Lambrecht resigned after much domestic criticism of her performance. The resignation comes at a sensitive moment, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz facing mounting pressure to make another significant step forward in German military aid to Ukraine by agreeing to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin is expected in Germany on Thursday to discuss further support for Ukraine, including whether to send the German-built tanks.

• An unidentified Russian man who reportedly is a former high-ranking member of the Russian private military contractor Wagner Group has sought asylum in Norway, authorities there said Monday. The Wagner Group, which includes a large number of convicts recruited in Russian prisons, had partnered with regimes in Africa to further Russian interests before being employed in Ukraine. The group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is a Putin ally who is wanted in the U.S.