A MISSILE strike on a civilian refuge in Ukraine has killed three women in an overnight onslaught by Vladimir Putin’s forces.
The latest act of savagery comes as Putin faces war crimes charges over the abduction of thousands of children, who were sent to hellhole camps in Russia.
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The attack was part of an overnight onslaught on in which seven other civilians were also killed, which came the day after a deadly attack on a school dorm.
It comes just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the President over the abductions.
Putin is facing a Nuremberg-style day of reckoning like the Nazis for the abductions, legal experts have said.
The shelter attacked is known as an ‘invincibility point’ and is one of many across Ukraine to provide access to electricity, heating, water and other basic services to civilians affected by the Ukraine war.
According to local officials, the shelter in Kostiantynivka was hit by an S-300 anti-aircraft missile at around 1am with five people in total killed in the town.
Photographs released by emergency services from the town showed the heavily damaged remains of the one-storey invincibility.
The building was reduced to rubble and a mattress was seen protruding from the debris.
One of the three dead women came from the Bakhmut area, scene of some of the heaviest fighting of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the emergency services said.
“Rescuers removed the bodies of three dead women from the rubble,” they said on the Telegram messaging app.
One person was pulled out of the rubble alive and two men also hurt.
Elsewhere, several towns and villages in the Sumy region had come under fire from missiles, drones and other weapons, said Ukraine’s air force.
Two civilians were killed and nine were wounded in the town of Bilopillia in a night time rocket and artillery barrage and air strikes.
Russian shelling killed one person in the city of Kherson and another in the town of Bilozerka.
Meanwhile dozens of people were left trapped under the rubble of a Ukrainian high school after a Russian drone strike that left nine dead.
Another 29 were wounded in the horror attack on the dormitory in the city of Rzhyshchiv near Kyiv in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The first explosions rang out at around 3am as Russia launched 21 kamikaze drones in a mammoth air attack.
An 11-year-old was among the victims, rescue services announced.
Residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia and the island of Khortytsia were also targeted by S-300 missiles, forcing people to hide in basements.
The Russians have been turning to using weapons such as the S-300 as it runs short on missiles due to Western sanctions.
The missiles are intended to be used as air defence missiles but have been repurposed and fitted with GPS to attack ground targets at a range of 75 miles.
They have been used extensively by Russia in attacks on civilian populations in Ukraine.
Russia has also ramped up its nuclear rhetoric, with a close ally of Putin warning of a “monstrous” nuclear war between the US and Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev, who was himself also president of Russia, said he wasn’t sure who’d win a conflict between the two nuclear armed powers.
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