MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Monday warned the United States of "consequences" and summoned its ambassador after Moscow said a Ukrainian strike with a US missile on Crimea killed four people.
Moscow has increasingly blasted Washington and Kyiv's Western backers for supplying weapons to be fired on Russian targets, calling them direct participants in the two-year conflict.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Sunday's strike on Sevastopol "barbaric" and accused Washington of "killing Russian children".
Two of the victims were minors, Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on Telegram.
Peskov also pointed to comments by President Vladimir Putin earlier this month about arming countries to potentially strike Western targets.
"The involvement of the United States, the direct involvement, as a result of which Russian civilians are killed, cannot be without consequences," Peskov told reporters on Monday. "Time will tell what these will be," he said. "Just ask my colleagues in Europe and above all in Washington, ask the press secretaries there why their government is killing Russian children," he said.
The foreign ministry said it had summoned US envoy Lynne Tracy. It later issued a statement saying that Washington "bears equal responsibility with the Kyiv regime for this atrocity" and the strike would "not go unpunished".
Russia said the strike on Sunday was carried out with a US-supplied ATACMS missile loaded with a cluster warhead.
Local Moscow-installed officials said the missile hit an area of the port city with sandy beaches and hotels.
Russia said 82 people including 27 children were hospitalised with injuries from the strike.
Meanwhile, Russian strikes on the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk killed four people and wounded dozens more on Monday, the governor of the Donetsk region said.
Over recent weeks, Moscow has concentrated its firepower on the eastern industrial region of Donetsk, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.
"At least four people were killed and 34 wounded. These are the preliminary results of the strike on Pokrovsk," the region's governor Vadym Filashkin said.
"Among the wounded are two children aged 12 and 13. They are in a moderate to serious condition," he added in a statement on social media.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president's office, said on Monday: "Crimea is Ukraine." "Russia must leave the peninsula. Their army and military objects there must cease to exist," he said on social media. A senior aide to the Ukrainian president, Mykhailo Podolyak, also suggested that Crimea was a legitimate military target. — AFP
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