MOSCOW, July 9. /TASS/. Kiev obviously planned to use the incident when an anti-missile projectile hit a children’s hospital as a background for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s participation in the NATO summit, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
"Indeed, this is a tragedy but it is used to create a background for Zelensky’s participation in the NATO summit," he said in an interview with VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin, commenting on the strike on the Okhmatdet children’s hospital.
"Such dirty, Jesuitical methods have been used more than once," he noted.
He drew attention to the fact that the strike with an anti-missile projectile took place ahead of the NATO summit. "I don’t think that there can be any coincidences when such things are concerned," he said.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Russian Armed Forces carried out a high-precision strike on Ukrainian defense facilities and air bases in response to Kiev’s attempts to attack energy facilities inside Russia, hitting all designated targets. Russia’s top brass dismissed as untrue Ukrainian allegations that a Russian missile strike deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure as they said images and footage from the site of the attack showed a Ukrainian air defense missile crashing into the health facility. The ministry emphasized that "the Kiev regime has been throwing such tantrums for years, each time ahead of a get-together (summit) of its NATO sponsors."
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will hold a meeting on Ukraine later on Tuesday, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky announced on July 8. At the meeting, Russia will share evidence refuting the Ukrainian version of the attack on Kiev, he added.