Ukraine Arrests Man Accused of Directing Russian Missile Strike on Pizza Restaurant Popular With Army Officers and Journalists

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian authorities arrested on Wednesday a man they accused of helping Russia direct a missile strike that killed at least 10 people, including three teenagers, at a popular pizza restaurant in east Ukraine.

The Tuesday evening attack on Kramatorsk wounded 61 other people, Ukraine’s National Police said, in the latest bombardment of a Ukrainian city, a tactic Russia has used heavily in the 16-month-old war.

The strike, and others elsewhere across Ukraine late Tuesday and early Wednesday, indicated that the Kremlin is not easing its aerial onslaught despite its political and military turmoil caused by a short-lived armed uprising last weekend.

There has been no apparent military push by Ukraine to exploit that turmoil, though the government has been tight-lipped about recent battlefield developments as it seeks to gain momentum in its recently launched counteroffensive.

The Kremlin reeled from the weekend mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner private army of prison recruits and other mercenaries which has played a key role for Russia in Ukraine. The rebellion was the gravest threat so far to Russian President Vladimir Putin´s grip on power.

Prigozhin went into exile in neighboring Belarus on Tuesday after Russia said he wouldn’t face charges for the revolt, but Putin is trying to tarnish Prigozhin’s reputation and perhaps accuse him of corruption, a Washington-based think tank said Wednesday.

“Putin has likely decided that he cannot directly eliminate Prigozhin without making him a martyr at this time,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment.

Two sisters, both age 14, died in the Kramatorsk attack, the city council’s educational department said. “Russian missiles stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels,” it said in a Telegram post.

The other dead teenager was 17, according to Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin.

The attack also damaged 18 multistory buildings, 65 houses, five schools, two kindergartens, a shopping center, an administrative building and a recreational building, regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Rescuers are still searching the rubble for bodies and more survivors.

Officials initially blamed the strike in Kramatorsk on an S-300 missile, a surface-to-air weapon that Russia´s forces have repurposed for loosely targeted strikes on cities, but the National Police later said Iskander short-range ballistic missiles were used.

Kramatorsk is a front-line city that houses the Ukrainian army´s regional headquarters. The pizza restaurant was frequented by journalists, aid workers and soldiers, as well as local residents.

The Security Service of Ukraine said it detained a man whom it suspects directed the strike on the restaurant who is an employee of the local gas transportation company.

He filmed the restaurant for the Russians and informed them about its popularity, the Security Service said in a Telegram post.

It provided no evidence for its claim. Russia has insisted during the war that it doesn´t aim at civilian targets, although its air strikes have killed many civilians.

Kramatorsk is located in Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claimed to annex last September but does not fully control. Russia has also occupied Crimea since 2015.

Ukrainian-held parts of the partially occupied provinces have been hit especially hard by Russian bombardment and are a key barrier to resolving the war.

The Kremlin demands that Kyiv recognize the annexations, while Kyiv has ruled out any talks with Russia until its troops pull back from all occupied territories. Kyiv recently launched a much-anticipated counteroffensive to take back occupied territory.

Russia, meanwhile, has stepped up its air campaign in Ukraine while fighting continues along the front line.

Russian forces on Tuesday and overnight also shelled 16 settlements in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, the Ukrainian presidential office reported.

It said a 77-year-old civilian was killed in the front-line town of Orikhiv, and that Russian shelling wounded three people in a nearby village recently retaken by Kyiv.

Also, a Russian supersonic cruise missile slammed into a cluster of holiday homes in central Ukraine, sparking a fire which injured a child, the presidential office said.

In other developments:

Pope Francis´ peace envoy, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, was to meet with an aide to President Putin, Yury Ushakov, in Moscow on Wednesday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the talks would include “possible ways of political-diplomatic settlement.”

Francis dispatched Zuppi, a veteran of the Catholic Church´s peace initiatives, to Moscow in hopes of helping spur peace negotiations after his visit to Kyiv earlier this month. At the Vatican on Wednesday, Francis again appealed for an end to the war, praying that Ukrainians “may soon find peace: There is so much suffering in Ukraine, let us not forget that.”