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At the site of the rocket impact, people lay flowers and stuffed animals in memory of the dead
Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Far from the front line in Donbass, in Vinnytsia in western Ukraine, Russian rockets fell on Thursday morning, killing at least 23 people, including three children.
One of them was four-year-old Lisa.
A video from shortly before her death is currently being increasingly shared on social media.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also uploaded it and confirmed the girl's death.
Lisa's mother posted the video on Thursday morning.
It shows the girl in light-colored clothing and a denim jacket pushing her stroller.
In photos taken after the missile attack, the same black and pink stroller lies on the ground, with traces of blood on the fabric.
Lisa's mother was taken to a hospital with serious injuries in the attack, according to the Defense Department.
It is unclear how she is doing at the moment.
Lisa and her mother were apparently on the way to speech therapy treatment, as the video suggests.
The girl had Down syndrome.
The mother regularly shared photos of her daughter on social media before the attack.
She gave insights into the life of her "little angel" and reflected on various topics, including how society deals with Down syndrome.
The Instagram account's latest photos show a mother and daughter in purple dresses in a field of lavender.
The BBC spoke to the manager of a local children's center that Lisa visited almost every day.
"Lisa was very happy, she liked to come to us," Valeriia Korol told the BBC.
'She was a very dear child.
For her mother, she was the whole meaning of her life.
She loved her madly.
I can't imagine what a tragedy this is for the family.” The center took to social media to ask for donations for the family.
According to the BBC, Lisa and her mother returned to Vinnytsia from Kyiv at the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine because the family felt it was safer there.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi's wife, Olena Zelenska, tweeted that she was dismayed at the girl's death.
After reading the message, "I realized that I know this girl," Selenska wrote.
She met Lisa while shooting a Christmas video.
"The little girl managed to paint not only herself and her dress, but also all the other children, myself, the cameramen and the director in just half an hour." Selenska shared the resulting video and wrote that she would share Lisa's relatives "cry".
In addition to Lisa, two other children were killed in the attack.
A seven-year-old boy and his mother died, as did an eight-year-old boy.
The Russian side has since confirmed the missile attack, but speaks of a military objective: the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Ukrainian military leadership had met with foreign arms suppliers.
All participants in the meeting were killed.
US official rejects Russian version of attack
According to Ukrainian sources, three rockets hit a tall building and a parking lot in Vinnytsia.
The hit »House of Officers« in the city center therefore dates from Soviet times and is now used, among other things, as a concert hall.
On the day of the attack, singer Roxolana was supposed to perform there.
Your sound director is among the dead.
A US Department of Defense official dismissed the Russian account: "I have no indication that a military target was anywhere near there," a senior US Department of Defense official told AFP.
Rather, the hit object looks “like a building with apartments”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the shelling of Vinnytsia an "open act of terrorism".
UN Secretary-General António Guterres and representatives of the West also reacted with horror.
The federal government in Berlin demanded that Moscow stop attacks on civilian facilities immediately.
The shelling of Vinnytsia was an "act of cruelty," said Deputy Government Spokesman Wolfgang Büchner.
This attack shows "once again that Russia is massively violating the rules of international law in this war."
kko/AFP