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Children’s hospital attacked as Russian strikes on Ukraine kill at least 31

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A barrage of Russian missile strikes hit targets in cities across Ukraine on Monday, including a children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing at least 31 people and injuring hundreds more, government officials said.

Ukrainian officials said the rare daytime aerial assault had struck Ukrainian cities during rush hour, including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

According to Ukraine’s general prosecutor, nine people had been k!lled in the capital, while 23 others had been injured. In Kryvyi Rih, 10 people had d!ed and 37 more were hurt, according to local officials.

Among the buildings hit was Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt Hospital, Ukraine’s largest children’s medical centre.

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Every year, around 7,000 surgeries including treatments for cancer and hematological diseases are conducted at the hospital, according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

Videos from the scene showed volunteers working with police and security services sift the rubble as smoke billowed from the hospital, while staff described how they tried to rush children to safety in the wake of the attack. Ukraine’s health minister Viktor Liashko said intensive care units, oncology departments and surgery units had been damaged.

“The key task here is to get people out of the rubble and provide assistance to those we can reach, as we have already taken out all the first ones,” he said in a Telegram post.

Natalia Sardudinova, a senior nurse, described the moment the strike hit the hospital saying that “it was scary, but we survived.”

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“It was loud, the windows were crunching,” she told CNN. “As soon as the alarm sounded, the children were taken out into the corridor.”

She said two children had been in the operating theatres at the time of the blast
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“Everything was in smoke, there was no air to breathe. The doctor was cut by shrapnel. The windows and doors were blown out. One nurse in the hospital was heavily injured,”

Sardudinova added. “My hands are still shaking. They don’t let anyone in now, they are afraid it will collapse.”

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Yulia Vasylenko, the mother of an 11-year-old cancer patient at the hospital, said her son Denys was evacuated outside following the strike.

“My son is on painkillers. He has cancer. He has been without medication for half a day. He was brought down the stairs from the third floor. There was smoke (and) heavy dust,” she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy said in a post on X that the exact number of casualties at the hospital was not yet known and that “there are people under the rubble” but that everyone from doctors to local residents are helping clear debris in the strike’s aftermath.

“Apartment buildings, infrastructure, and a children’s hospital have been damaged. All services are engaged to rescue as many people as possible,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X.

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He also said that around 40 missiles of various types had been launched against Ukraine.

“The entire world must use all its determination to finally put an end to the Russian strikes. Killing is what Putin brings. Only together can we bring real peace and security,” he added.

Several European nations denounced the attacks with France calling it “barbaric” while the United Kingdom’s new prime minister Keir Starmer said attacking innocent children was “the most depraved of actions.”

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Pentagon set to sack 5400 staff as attack hits Trump’s downsizing plan

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The Defense Department said Friday that it’s cutting 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and will put a hiring freeze in place.

It comes after staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, U.S. officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt. Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.

“We anticipate reducing the Department’s civilian workforce by 5-8% to produce efficiencies and refocus the Department on the President’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Darin Selnick, who is acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement.

President Donald Trump’s administration is firing thousands of federal workers who have fewer civil service protections. For example, roughly 2,000 employees were cut from the U.S. Forest Service, and an 7,000 people are expected to be let go at the Internal Revenue Service.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has supported cuts, posting on X last week that the Pentagon needs “to cut the fat (HQ) and grow the muscle (warfighters.)”

The Defense Department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.

Hegseth also has directed the military services to identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities. It represents about 8% of the military’s budget.

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Senate approves Trump’s ally, Patel as FBI boss

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The Republican-controlled US Senate on Thursday confirmed Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist of President Donald Trump, to be director of the FBI, the country’s top law enforcement agency.

Patel, 44, whose nomination sparked fierce but ultimately futile opposition from Democrats, was approved by a 51-49 vote.

The vote was split along party lines with the exception of two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted not to confirm Patel to head the 38,000-strong Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Patel drew fire from Democrats for his promotion of conspiracy theories, his defense of pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and his vow to root out members of a supposed “deep state” plotting to oppose the Republican president.

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The Senate has approved all of Trump’s cabinet picks so far, underscoring his iron grip on the Republican Party.

Among them is Tulsi Gabbard, confirmed as the nation’s spy chief despite past support for adversarial nations including Russia and Syria, and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be health secretary.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, in a last-ditch bid to derail Patel’s nomination, held a press conference outside FBI headquarters in downtown Washington on Thursday and warned that he would be “a political and national security disaster” as FBI chief.

Speaking later on the Senate floor, Durbin said Patel is “dangerously, politically extreme.”

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“He has repeatedly expressed his intention to use our nation’s most important law enforcement agency to retaliate against his political enemies,” he said.

Patel, who holds a law degree from Pace University and worked as a federal prosecutor, replaces Christopher Wray, who was named FBI director by Trump during his first term in office.

Relations between Wray and Trump became strained, however, and though he had three more years remaining in his 10-year tenure, Wray resigned after Trump won November’s presidential election.

– ‘Enemies list’ –

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A son of Indian immigrants, the New York-born Patel served in several high-level posts during Trump’s first administration, including as senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council and as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary.

There were fiery exchanges at Patel’s confirmation hearing last month as Democrats brought up a list of 60 supposed “deep state” actors — all critics of Trump — he included in a 2022 book, whom he said should be investigated or “otherwise reviled.”

Patel has denied that he has an “enemies list” and told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was merely interested in bringing lawbreakers to book.

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” he said.

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The FBI has been in turmoil since Trump took office and a number of agents have been fired or demoted including some involved in the prosecutions of Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling classified documents.

Nine FBI agents have sued the Justice Department, seeking to block efforts to collect information on agents who were involved in investigating Trump and the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.

In their complaint, the FBI agents said the effort to collect information on employees who participated in the investigations was part of a “purge” orchestrated by Trump as “politically motivated retribution.”

Trump, on his first day in the White House, pardoned more than 1,500 of his supporters who stormed Congress in a bid to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

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EU diplomat bombs Trump over dictator comment on Zelensky, points at Putin

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The EU’s top diplomat said Thursday she had initially thought US President Donald Trump had confused Volodymyr Zelensky with Vladimir Putin when he called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator”.

“First when I heard this, I was like, oh, he must be mixing the two, because clearly Putin is the dictator,” Kaja Kallas told reporters in Johannesburg.

In a post on his Truth Social platform Wednesday, Trump wrote that Zelensky was a “dictator without elections”.

Zelensky’s five-year term expired last year but Ukrainian law does not require elections during war-time.

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“Zelensky is an elected leader in fair and free elections,” Kallas said in a briefing after attending a meeting of G20 foreign ministers.

The constitutions of many countries allow for elections to be suspended during wartime in order to focus on the conflict, she said.

Russia, which attacked Ukraine in 2022, could choose to hold free elections but “they are afraid of democracy expanding because in democracy, the leaders are held accountable,” the EU foreign policy chief said.

“It’s literally from the dictator’s handbook.”

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Trump has rattled Ukraine and its European backers by opening direct talks with Moscow on ending the war but excluding Kyiv and European countries.

Kallas said the focus should remain on supporting Ukraine and putting political and economic pressure on Russia.

The stronger Ukraine is on “the battlefield, the stronger they are behind the negotiation table,” she said, adding, “Russia doesn’t really want peace.”

It was also premature to talk about sending troops to protect Ukraine after any ceasefire deal with Russia, Kallas said.

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Rather, Ukraine needed concrete security guarantees that Russia would not attack again, she said, adding that history had shown that ceasefires had only been opportunities for Russia “to regroup and rearm.”

AFP

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