Ukraine calls off tower block search with 45 dead and 20 missing

Rescuers have called off the search for victims of the Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

The search of the Dnipro tower block was called off on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Rescuers have called off the search for victims of the Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, with 20 people still missing and funerals being held in the community.

After the carnage, Ukrainians pressed ahead with talks to obtain more Western weapons, and Ukraine army chief Valery Zaluzhny met Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the first time in person in Poland.

Ukrainian authorities said late on Tuesday the Russian strike in eastern Dnipro at the weekend killed at least 45 people, including six children. The youngest was 11 months old and one of the bodies recovered from the rubble on Tuesday was that of a child.

The toll made Saturday’s attack one of the deadliest since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion last February.

The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the strike, which also wounded 79 people.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his pledge that everyone who “caused this terror” would be found and held to account. At 1pm (10pm AEDT), emergency services said the search and rescue operations at the site were completed. “Twenty people are still missing,” they said.

In Moscow, at a monument to Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka, a few residents laid flowers in the snow in memory of those killed in Dnipro.

Kyiv has called for more weapons to defend itself, and at the weekend received pledges of ­British tanks.

On Tuesday, General Zaluzhny said he had met in Poland with General Milley and “outlined the urgent needs of the armed forces of Ukraine”. The pair “discussed the unprovoked and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and exchanged perspectives and assess­ments,” said Joint Staff spokesman Dave Butler. “The chairman re­affirmed unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Germany announced on January 5 it was following the US in sending a Patriot missile defence battery to Ukraine.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte signalled his “intention” on Tuesday during a meeting with President Joe Biden to assist in the effort. “We have the intention to join what you’re doing with Germany on the Patriots project, the air-defence system,” Mr Rutte told Mr Biden in the White House.

The Dnipro attack triggered the resignation of a high-profile Ukrainian official who had sparked outrage by suggesting air defence could have been responsible by intercepting a Russian missile, which then fell on the building.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, said in an online interview hours after the attack that the missile had been “shot down and fell on the entranceway (to the flats). It exploded where it fell.” His allegation was seized on by Kremlin propaganda as “evidence” that Russia does not target civilians.

The Ukrainian air force said it did not have the ability to shoot down Kh-22 missiles, which travel at up to 4000km/h and are notoriously inaccurate.

Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov demanded that the SBU intelligence agency carry out an investigation into Mr Arestovych, 47.

“I swear before God that the missile strike was direct,” he wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian MPs also had called for his dismissal. Mr Arestovych said he had been voicing a preliminary theory, but admitted he had made a “serious mistake” and would step down from his post.

Meanwhile, fighting was continuing across the frontline on Tuesday, with heavy shelling in the eastern city of Bakhmut. Outside the city, servicemen dug new trenches while tanks and armoured vehicles rolled past. “It’s like Verdun out there,” said Ivan, an ambulance driver, referring to the notorious World War I battle.

AFP