Ukraine presidential adviser tenders resignation over Dnipro missile remarks
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has tendered his resignation after a public outcry erupted over comments he made suggesting that Ukrainian forces downed a Russian missile that fell on an apartment building in the central city of Dnipro and killed dozens of people.
Arestovych announced his resignation after publicly apologizing and rowing back on his remarks in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
“I offer my sincere apologies to the victims and their relatives, the residents of Dnipro and everyone who was deeply hurt by my prematurely erroneous version of the reason for the Russian missile striking a residential building,” Arestovych wrote.
The Ukrainian Air Force claims the apartment complex was hit by a Russian Kh-22 missile, which Kiev does not have the equipment to shoot down.
On the other side, Kremlin blames Ukraine, saying that Ukrainian air defense systems caused the damage.
“The Russian armed forces do not strike residential buildings or social infrastructure. They strike military targets,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The death toll from the air strike on the apartment building in the east Ukrainian city of Dniprohas has risen to 44, Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov said on Tuesday. The number is rising as more bodies are pulled from the building.
Filatov did not say how many people were still unaccounted for. A local official who put the death toll at 40 on Monday said at the time that 30 people were still not accounted for.
Home to a million people, Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, which serves as a crucial supply hub for Ukrainian forces in the eastern region of Donbas.
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