A Russian missile tore into a small village in eastern Ukraine on Thursday as residents were gathering for a memorial service, killing more than 50 civilians, including a 6-year-old child, in one of the war’s deadliest attacks, officials in Kyiv said.
The strike killed at least 51 people and wiped out around one-sixth of the entire village of Hroza, in the eastern Kharkiv region, according to Ukrainian officials. It came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended a summit of European leaders in a bid to shore up support for his country’s fight amid fears of a U.S.-led wobble.
“A demonstrably brutal Russian crime — a missile attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely deliberate act of terrorism,” Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “Russian terror must be stopped.”
Images broadcast on Ukrainian television showed rescuers picking through piles of rubble and mangled concrete, lifting blanket-swaddled bodies from the razed buildings.
The missile struck a cafe where around 60 of Hroza’s residents were attending a memorial service for another villager who had died, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Ukrainian television. The village was home to only about 330 people, he said.
“Someone from each family was present in the café,” he said. “It’s terrible for the village, for the whole of Ukraine. This is another heinous war crime committed by the Russians for which they must be held responsible.”
Some of those killed were in the grocery store next door, which was also destroyed, he said.
Klymenko wrote on Telegram that “preliminary findings” suggested the attack was carried out using a Russian Iskander missile.
“There may still be people under the rubble of the destroyed shop and café, so rescuers, police and local residents continue to sort through the debris,” he said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry accused Russia of having “deliberately and barbarically attacked civilian targets.”
Denise Brown, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said in a statement that she was “appalled by the reports of a Russian strike that, shortly ago, ripped apart the village of Hroza.”
She said images from the scene showing dead bodies strewn on the ground were “absolutely horrifying” and noted that intentionally attacking civilians is a war crime.
She added, “Our thoughts are also with the people of Ukraine, who had to witness today, once again, another barbaric consequence of Russia’s invasion.”
Moscow did not immediately comment on the accusations from Kyiv. It has consistently denied targeting civilians, despite documentary and witness evidence showing that it has often killed and injured nonmilitary personnel, as in previous conflicts.
The missile strike on Hroza would be one of the deadliest attacks on civilians during the war.
In April last year, cluster munitions hit a train station in Kramatorsk, killing 60 people. And an Associated Press investigation found that around 600 people may have been killed when a theater in Mariupol was bombed while civilians sheltered inside; that total has not been confirmed.
Last month, another missile strike in Kostiantynivka, a city 80 miles south of Hroza, was blamed on Russia by Ukrainian officials. An investigation by The New York Times said there was evidence it was, in fact, an errant Ukrainian missile that had gone off course.
Hroza was among the parts of the Kharkiv region captured by Russian forces advancing early in the war, but Ukrainian troops took it back last fall. Only Tuesday, Zelenskyy had visited the area to inspect equipment supplied by the West.
He has insisted he remains confident that his country’s allies will continue to send military aid, despite growing signs of splits in Europe and the U.S. Congress.
“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for one reason only: to make its genocidal aggression the new normal for the entire world,” Zelenskyy said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel. “We are now focused with European leaders, in particular, on how to strengthen our air defense, reinforce our troops, and protect our country from terror.”
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin was speaking at a forum in the Black Sea on Thursday.
Putin appeared to brush off what he called a temporary “glitch” in funding for Ukraine after the deal to avoid a shutdown didn’t include any new aid.
Recent Comments