WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine says 32 killed by Russian ballistic missile strike on Sumy
Thirty-two people were killed and over 80 others wounded by two Russian ballistic missiles that slammed into the heart of the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday morning, Ukrainian officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack - one of the deadliest strikes on Ukraine this year - and called for a tough international reaction against Moscow.
"Only scoundrels can act like this. Taking the lives of ordinary people," Zelenskiy wrote on social media, alongside a chilling video which showed corpses on the ground, a destroyed bus and burnt-out cars in the middle of a city street.
"And this is on a day when people go to church: Palm Sunday, the feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem," he said.
Interior minister Klymenko said the victims were on the street, in vehicles, public transport and in buildings when the strike hit.
"Deliberate destruction of civilians on an important church feast day," he wrote.
Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy's chief of staff, said the missiles contained cluster munitions.
"The Russians are doing this to kill as many civilians as possible," he said.
Reuters was seeking comment from Russian authorities.
Andriy Kovalenko, a security official who runs Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation, noted that the strike came after a visit to Moscow by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.
"Russia is building all this so-called diplomacy ... around strikes on civilians," he wrote on Telegram.
Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, held talkswith Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in St. Petersburg on the search for a Ukraine peace deal, as Trump told Russia to "get moving".
In the aftermath of Sunday's strike, Zelenskiy called on the U.S. and Europe to get tough on Russia in response to what he described as terrorism.
"Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging out this war. Without pressure on the aggressor, peace is impossible. Talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and aerial bombs," he wrote.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently holds about 20% of the country's territory in the east and south. Russian forces have been slowly advancing in the east of late, though missile and drone strikes now dominate the war.
Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that Ukraine had carried out five attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the previous day in what it called a violation of a U.S.-brokered moratorium on such strikes.
Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause strikes on each other's energy facilities last month, but both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Russian missile strikes Kiev troops during award ceremony in Sumy – Ukrainian MP
A Russian missile has struck Ukrainian troops lining up for an award ceremony in the city of Sumy near the front line, according to Ukrainian lawmaker Mariana Bezuglaya, a former member of Vladimir Zelensky’s political party.
The acting mayor of Sumy, Artyon Kobzar, said that the strike on the city’s center on Sunday left more than 20 people dead and over 80 wounded.
Bezuglaya claimed in a post on Telegram later in the day that those killed were Ukrainian servicemen.
“An appeal to [Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr] Syrsky and separately to the commander of the Territorial Defense Forces: Do not gather the troops for award ceremonies, especially in civilian cities,” she wrote.
The legislator, who used to be a member of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ party, also alleged that “the Russians had information about the gathering.”
“Do not do roll calls. Do not stage award ceremonies,” she urged the military.
Ukrainian journalist and former MP Natalya Mosiychuk also confirmed that the Russian strike had targeted a muster of the Ukrainian servicemen. She called for the arrest of the head of the Sumy military administration Vladimir Artyukh and Zelensky party legislator Mikhail Ananachenko, who she blamed for organizing and promoting the award ceremony. “Beside the soldiers, they gathered civilians, including children there. Bastards and scumbags!”
The Russian Defense Ministry did not mention a strike in Sumy during its daily bulletin on Sunday.
Bezuglaya, 36, has repeatedly criticized Ukraine’s senior military commanders since quitting Zelensky’s party last February. In July 2024, she was blacklisted by the notorious Ukrainian website Mirotvorets, a semi-official database of perceived enemies of the state.
Reuters/RT