‘Huge disappointment’: Zelensky blasts Modi
meeting with Putin the same day Russian attack devastates Ukraine hospital
By Helen
Regan, Mariya Knight and
Victoria Butenko, CNN
5 minute read
Updated 3:40 AM EDT, Tue July 9, 2024
Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet at the
Novo-Ogaryovo state residence near Moscow, on July 8, 2024.
Gavrill
Grigorov/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
CNN —
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday criticized his Indian
counterpart’s visit to Moscow as a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow
to peace efforts,” on the same day that a Russian missile smashed into a
children’s hospital in Kyiv.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian
President Vladimir Putin at his residence in
Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow on Monday, while 900 kilometers away (560 miles)
Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities in a morning rush hour assault
that killed at least 38 people and injured 190 others.
Modi’s two-day trip marks his first visit to Russia since Putin began
his full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two and a half years ago, with images
and video Monday showing the two leaders hugging, chatting over tea, riding in
an electric vehicle and watching a horse show.
“It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to
see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody
criminal in Moscow on such a day,” Zelensky said in a post on X on Monday,
referring to the deadly Russian attacks.
Modi did not address the strikes while speaking to the Indian diaspora
in Moscow on Tuesday, but praised relations between the two countries. Modi
also announced the opening of two new consulates in the Russian cities of
Yekaterinburg and Kazan to “facilitate travel and business.”
“No matter if the temperatures in Russia are in minus, Russia-India
friendship has always been in plus,” he said. “This is a relationship built on
a foundation of mutual trust and mutual respect.”
The large-scale daylight bombardment struck the capital Kyiv, and
cities including Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk – some of which
are heavily populated areas far from the front lines.
In Kyiv, 28 people were killed, including four children, Ukraine’s
State Emergency Service said Tuesday. Two people were killed and at least 16
others were injured in the strike on Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt hospital.
The facility is Ukraine’s largest children’s medical center and has
been vital in the care of some of the sickest children from across the country.
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