Ukraine blasts Russia at UN General Assembly for missile attacks

The U.N. General Assembly was set to debate Monday on whether to demand that Russia reverse course on annexing four regions of Ukraine, but the discussion came as Moscow's most extensive missile strikes in months alarmed much of the international community anew.

"The entire world has once again seen the true face of the terrorist state that kills our people. Suffering defeats on the battlefield, Russia takes it out on the peaceful residents of Ukrainian cities," Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN said.

The assembly meeting, planned before Monday's barrage, was intended to respond to Russia's purported absorption last month of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The move followed Kremlin-orchestrated "referendums" that the Ukrainian government and the West have dismissed as illegitimate.

Kyslytsya blasted the hypocracy in Russia's statement on the attack. "You claim the seizure of an area of a neighboring sovereign state under the pretext of protection of local population,  and then you kill this population with dozens of missiles.

Russia said it was retaliating for a Ukrainian "terrorist" attack Saturday on an important bridge.

The U.N. is condemning Russia's retaliation against Ukraine Monday, following a lethal barrage against multiple cities resulting in numerous civilian casualties.

Image: AP