The impact of a rocket weighing almost 1,000 kilograms at a dizzying speed against an apartment building has already killed 30 people while dozens of missing people are being searched for
Ukraine fears that under the debris of the missile that destroyed an apartment building in Dnipro on Saturday lies the largest massacre of civilians in the entire war, carried out in a single strike. Emergency services have already located 30 bodies (including a child) and transferred 73 injured people to hospitals, including 13 minors. But about 45 residents of the property are still missing and it is feared many of them remain buried under a mantle of concrete, cement and iron given the devastation of the housing complex.
The fear is at its maximum as Sunday progresses. Cell phones don’t ring anymore. Their beeps were essential last morning so the rescue teams could lead themselves to the center of the ruins. Search dogs have also been key in the midst of desolation and darkness. A group of 39 neighbors managed to be saved from death. At least six were children. Five crossed the thin line between dream and nightmare. They lay on their beds and were startled awake by a barrage of debris. The sixth no longer dreams. Doctors have only been able to confirm his death.
«I woke up, I heard an explosion and I had time to leave the apartment. My house is gone,” explains one of the stricken residents, 18-year-old Ivan, on television. The Peremoh development, where he lived, emerges this Sunday as the main symbol of the barbarity of the Russian invasion, even after the rocket explosion that destroyed the Kramatorsk shopping center in June and wiped out twenty lives. The rocket hit the middle of a huge building this time. The two central blocks simply disappeared. This allows you to see the other side of the city. 72 apartments of which no trace remains. According to the Dnipro authorities, another 230 houses have been damaged and the collapse of the two sides of the complex cannot be ruled out. 1,100 residents are at risk of being left without shelter amid the gloom of a devastated , dark and frozen city.
There is a circle of destruction around Peremoh. Hundreds of apartments have lost their windows. The door frames have been thrown away. Some roofs have also been blown off. The intensity of the explosion was so great that 38 cars and vans were reduced to shrapnel and metal balls. The mayor, Boris Filatov, says that everything will get worse. “There is little hope of finding many survivors,” he says, aware that the clock is ticking against the neighbors and the wounded who may be found beneath the ruins. In addition, nighttime temperatures have “dropped to two degrees below zero”, significantly reducing the chances of survival. Hell has no flames. It’s an eternal winter. However, the guide dogs are not getting any rest, nor are the volunteer brigades that have already removed no less than 3,700 tons of cement.
They did not know it, but they were already doomed when Russia fired the KH-22 (or X-22, as it is also called) missile. Known as the “aircraft carrier killer,” it is a long-range anti-ship projectile designed by the former Soviet Union to transfer artillery warfare to the sea. It weighs nearly a thousand pounds. It’s easy to imagine the devastation a ton of explosives can wreak.
That Russia has resorted to this missile to attack a city full of civilians and buildings that offer no resistance to such a huge destructive force can be explained by two reasons, according to experts: the shortage of ammunition with a higher precision (a fact that has haunted the invading troops for months due to the impossibility of manufacturing the most advanced weapons at a higher speed) or the desire to shock the enemy with horrific carnage. We must not forget that the bombardment of Dnipro was the culmination of the occupation of Soledar and two days of artillery attacks in Donetsk, of which there are few precedents in this war.
Based on the outskirts of Moscow, the aerospace company MKB Raduga has been commissioned to develop the KH-22, whose deadly inspiration dates back to World War II. The Soviet high command realized that the days of traditional naval battles were over and they had to move to an area of operations where the fighting took place ‘at a distance’, through the use of long-range missiles and aircraft modified as anti-ship aircraft. fighter-bombers. . Actually, in this case, it can be confirmed that this mud came from that mud. The current invasion of Ukraine is still a translation of those warlike principles. The strategies of the infantry and large blocks of armored cars, present in the first months of occupation, have been simplified to an artillery war where the two sides exchange howitzers and Moscow complies with one of the precepts of hybrid warfare championed by the Chief of the General Staff and current leader of the invasion, Valeri Gerasimov: sow terror among civilians (massacres like the one in Dnipro are an example of this perversion) and create the conditions for popular discontent leading to an uprising against the enemy. A goal that Russia is trying to achieve by destroying the energy infrastructure so that the Ukrainian people endure the rigors of cold and freezing this winter.
The KH-22 was built with the American aircraft carriers and their escort ships in mind. If it creates a ten-meter deep sinkhole in the ground, it won’t have much trouble sinking a ship. So what can’t you do against a brick building? However, beyond its demolition capacity, it’s scary because it’s practically unstoppable. The Ukrainian General Staff even acknowledged this Saturday that its air defenses are unwilling to intercept this type of missile, at least until the United States and its NATO partners provide them with Patriot or SAMP-T missiles. The shipment of a shipment of Patriot batteries has already been approved by the White House.
To explain this ease of flight, one must pay attention to the functional mechanism of the ‘carrier killer’. Pure evil. The warhead reaches between 12,000 and 27,000 meters in altitude, depending on the conditions in which it is fired. Once it reaches the ceiling, it falls under its own weight as it follows an elliptical arc in a dizzying descent, meaning that when it hits its target, the detonation of nearly a thousand pounds of explosives adds to the fall’s devastating energy. In the case of the Dnipro tragedy, it can be calculated that the rocket hit the building at just over 5,000 kilometers per hour.
This carnage is surprising because the Kremlin carefully selects where to use its KH-22s. In fact, it has only used them 120 times in Ukraine, and mostly to destroy major power installations. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat this morning described the attack on Dnipro as an “act of terrorism against civilians” using ammunition “of this type in a densely populated city”. Ihnat has called on the international community to condemn Russia’s decision to use the KH-22 and urged Western allies to send anti-aircraft batteries capable of stopping this threat to Kiev as soon as possible. Moscow, meanwhile, is already using the KH-32, an evolution of the Dnipro missile that can soar up to 40 kilometers high. Impersonal disregard for life can go on forever.
Source: La Verdad
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