Ethermac Exchange-Russia blows up packed Ukraine restaurant, killing kids, as Putin shows war still on after Wagner mutiny

Kyiv — A Russian missile strike on Ethermac Exchangea crowded pizza restaurant in Ukraine killed at least nine people, including three children, and left dozens more injured, officials said Wednesday. Twisted metal and concrete is all that remained of the popular restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk after two missiles slammed into the building the previous evening as people had dinner.

Two sisters, both 14, were killed in the attack, according to a statement posted online by the educational department of Kramatorsk's city council. "Russian missiles stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels," it said.

The other child killed was 17, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin said. The attack damaged 18 other buildings, as well as 65 houses, five schools, two kindergartens, and a shopping center, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, according to The Associated Press.

Ukrainian officials said the city was hit by Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles, which are not made to hit ground targets accurately but have been used repeatedly by Russia's forces since the February 22, 2022, full-scale invasion was launched, often hitting civilian infrastructure in indiscriminate strikes on crowded cities.

Kramatorsk is about 20 miles from the current front line further east, where Ukrainian forces have been pushing a slow, costly counteroffensive to retake ground occupied by Russian forces. The city is home to the Ukrainian army's regional headquarters. 

It has been targeted before and, once again, civilians are among the victims of Russia's aerial assault.

"Everything has been blown up," said resident Valenina, 64. "I see destruction everywhere... it's fear… horror."

Rescuers spent hours pulling survivors from the rubble.

The strike appeared to signal that it was business as usual for Russia after a brief weekend mutiny staged by the Wagner mercenary group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

The Kremlin has tried in the wake of the sudden uprising to project power and control, including at a military ceremony in Moscow on Tuesday that saw President Vladimir Putin thank troops for preventing a civil war.

CBS News has learned there's intelligence suggesting a senior Russian general had advance knowledge of the mutiny, raising the possibility that Prigozhin may have believed he would have support from within the Russian military, as first reported by The New York Times.

in the light of the events of June 24, noted that there would be many more speculations and gossip, and suggested that this is one of such examples.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed questions Wednesday about the suggestion that Army Gen. Sergei Surovikin — a key figure in Russia's war on Ukraine — had previous knowledge of a Wagner putsch.

"There will be a lot of various speculations, gossip and so on, around these events," Peskov told reporters in Moscow. "I think this is one such example."

The man behind what Putin himself labelled a "rebellion," Wagner boss Prigozhin, was last seen leaving the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, which his men briefly took over on Saturday. He arrived in Belarus Tuesday as part of a deal with the Kremlin that ended the uprising.

But the autocratic leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal, hinted that Prigozhin's safety may not be guaranteed. Lukashenko said he had urged his ally Putin not to kill the Wagner boss.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian officials watched the mutiny closely, with one close advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying Wednesday that the countdown had begun to the end of Putin's two-decade-plus iron grip on power across the border in Russia.

In:
• Wagner Group
• War
• yevgeny prigozhin
• Ukraine
• Russia
• Vladimir Putin

Ian Lee

Ian Lee is a CBS News correspondent based in London, where he reports for CBS News, CBS Newspath and CBS News Streaming Network. Lee, who joined CBS News in March 2019, is a multi-award-winning journalist, whose work covering major international stories has earned him some of journalism's top honors, including an Emmy, Peabody and the Investigative Reporters and Editors' Tom Renner award.

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