Ukrainian Rescuers Dig for Survivors in Russian Strike on Housing Complex

Rescue work in Slovyansk, one of the biggest cities in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region that Russian President Vladimir Putin last fall declared to be part of Russia, focused on a five-story apartment building that was partially destroyed by one of several S-300 missiles fired by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s national emergency service, which deployed several cranes and dozens of personnel to remove the debris, said it believes that five people remain under the rubble, possibly alive. In addition to the nine fatalities, Friday’s Russian strikes on Slovyansk injured 21 people, including children, the service said.

“Not a single hour of this week before Easter has passed without Russian killings and terror. That state is evil, and it will lose. Winning is our obligation to mankind,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said after the Slovyansk attack. Ukraine celebrates the Orthodox Easter holiday this Sunday.

Mr. Zelensky met with the heads of Ukraine’s civilian and military intelligence services to discuss preparations for a planned spring offensive. The U.S. and allies have trained and equipped nine Ukrainian army brigades, in addition to several other brigades established by Kyiv, in an effort to reclaim at least some of the 18% of Ukrainian soil that remains under Russian occupation. Ukrainian officials have said that the leak of highly classified Pentagon documents on Ukrainian preparations won’t affect their plans.

In recent months, Russia has repeatedly used the S-300, an antiaircraft system that can be repurposed for ground strikes as far as 70 miles away, to hit residential areas in eastern and southern Ukraine, killing scores of civilians. The United Nations international commission of inquiry on Ukraine, in a report last month, said that Russia may have committed a variety of war crimes in Ukraine, including attacks in “populated areas with an apparent disregard for civilian harm and suffering.”

Slovyansk, where the Russian intervention in Ukraine began once a group of Russian veterans led by a retired Russian intelligence colonel seized administrative buildings in April 2014, had become relatively safe in recent months, after a Ukrainian offensive in September and October ousted Russian forces from the nearby cities of Izyum and Lyman. Shops, banks and restaurants operate in Slovyansk, and now that it is outside Russian artillery range, many residents who had fled a year ago have returned.

As Ukraine prepares for its spring offensive, which would introduce Western-made tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to the battlefield for the first time, Russian forces continue trying to seize the roughly 45% of the Donetsk region that remains in Ukrainian hands. Since last summer, the main battleground has been in the city of Bakhmut, where both sides have incurred thousands of casualties.

Wagner troops now control more than two-thirds of the city, including the ruins of what used to be the city center, with Ukrainian troops trying to halt the Russian advance along the railway line that runs from north to south in the western part of the city. Fighting in recent days has focused on the area of the railway station, footage uploaded by Ukrainian troops shows. Despite several Russian attempts to cut supply roads and encircle Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers in the city say that they can still receive ammunition and food.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of Wagner, wrote in a lengthy essay published Friday that Russia has already reached many goals of its “special military operation” by decimating Ukraine’s male population and by seizing a large strip of territory along the Azov and Black seas, creating a land bridge to Crimea.

“The authorities and the society overall need to put some thick full stop in the SMO. The ideal option is to declare an end to the SMO and to tell everyone that Russia had achieved planned results,” he wrote. Mr. Prigozhin cautioned, however, that the planned Ukrainian offensive would render such an option impossible.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at [email protected]