Ukraine said that a Russian missile strike, one of the bloodiest attacks in the ongoing conflict, killed at least 51 people, including a toddler.
On Thursday, a walkout took place in a town near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk. According to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, the attack occurred shortly after midday local time and targeted a cafe and a shop in Hroza, which is located in the Kharkiv area.
Following the walkout, scenes of emergency workers trekking through the dense rubble emerged. Six people were hurt in the attack and are being treated by medical personnel. According to Oleh Synehubov, a regional military officer, the bodies of the deceased, including a 6-year-old boy, were discovered from the demolished structures.
According to the Ukrainian interior minister, 29 victims have been identified, and the other bodies have been taken to facilities in Kharkiv.
When the missile impacted the village store, it caused damage unprecedented since an earlier strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk in early 2022, which claimed the lives of more than 60 people.
According to Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, the local cafe was conducting a wake for a dead Ukrainian soldier when the missile struck, killing numerous members of the deceased’s family.
The slain Ukrainian soldier had previously been interred in Dnipro, but his relatives had requested that he be reburied in his birthplace, according to Chubenko. “The wake was attended by the deceased’s son, who was also a soldier,” he added. The boy, his wife, and mother were in a cafe when they were murdered by a rocket.”
According to reports, the attack wiped off roughly one-fifth of the village’s population of 330 people.
According to Chubenko, a similar attack occurred in the nearby town of Pervomaiske, where people were also paying their respects to a deceased soldier. “His fellow soldiers were present then,” he noted. There were only civilians at the scene of the incident today.”
The missile used in the strike was an Iskander missile, noted for its relatively low range and delivering a warhead weighing between 500 and 700 kilos. Russian forces have repeatedly used these missiles against Ukraine, resulting in substantial civilian deaths.
Hroza is around 40 kilometers from the battle’s frontlines, near Kupiansk, a city in the Kharkiv region that Russian forces seized early in the fight but lost a year ago. Since then, the Ukrainian military has worked to thwart Moscow’s advances, recognizing the city’s strategic importance in stopping Russia from crossing the neighboring Oskil River.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has underlined the necessity for new defense systems to safeguard the country from such terrorist activities, particularly as concerns mount over Western partners’ declining military help. Political upheaval in the US Congress, as well as depleting NATO munitions inventories, pose possible dangers to the delivery of military aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky termed the attack “a demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and demanded a stop to Russian terror. He urged international cooperation in dealing with the aggression, saying, “Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for one reason only: to make its genocidal aggression the new normal for the entire world.”
Zelensky requested comfort from European leaders in order to maintain unity in the face of Russia’s invasion, and he stressed the importance of coordinated actions with international backing in order to prevent future casualties.
The UN humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine condemned the strike as a war crime, noting that it is a crime to target civilians or undertake excessive attacks. She said, “Our thoughts are also with the people of Ukraine, who had to witness today, once again, another barbaric consequence of Russia’s invasion.”