According to the Ukrainian police, Russia fired two S-300 surface-to-air missiles at the city on Tuesday. The attack destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant in the city center, popular with journalists and military personnel. Ukrainian media reported that foreign military instructors were in the city.
“The search and rescue work and the removal of the rubble are underway,” the rescue service said on the Internet on Wednesday. Among the injured were three Colombian celebrities — well-known author Héctor Abad, politician Sergio Jaramillo and journalist Catalina Gómez, who were having dinner with Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelima at the restaurant, Abad and Jaramillo said in a joint statement.
The 37-year-old Amelima, whose works have been translated into German and English, is in mortal danger, it said. She was injured in the head.
In addition to the restaurant, apartments, shops, cars and a post office as well as several other buildings were damaged, the prosecutor said. A journalist from AFP saw ambulances, police, soldiers and the city’s mayor at the scene. Numerous residents of the city gathered in front of the restaurant.
“A large number of civilians” were in the restaurant at the time of the attack, said the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko. “There were a lot of people in there – there are children under the rubble,” said Yevgen, who had dinner with two friends. “We were just about to leave.” But now one of his friends is under the rubble, he told AFP.
Her 23-year-old half-brother Nikita was standing near the pizza oven when the attack took place, Natalia reported tearfully. “You can’t get him out, he’s buried. Roof tiles fell on him.”
A dust-covered man in a chef’s uniform also said many people were in the restaurant at the time of the attack. “I was lucky,” said the 32-year-old, pointing to the sky.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured Moscow that Russia was not shelling “civilian infrastructure.” “Attacks are carried out only against facilities that are connected in one way or another to military infrastructure,” he added. The Russian Defense Ministry said the Russian army had shelled a “temporary base” of the Ukrainian army’s 56th Panzergrenadier Brigade in Kramatorsk.
Kramatorsk was a city of 150,000 before the war and is the last major city under Ukrainian control in the east of the country. It is about 30 kilometers from the front.
The city is an important railway junction and hosts military facilities. It is regularly the target of Russian bombing raids. The deadliest attack to date took place on the train station in April 2022, when many civilians tried to flee the area due to the Russian war of aggression. 61 people died and more than 160 others were injured.
