Russian missiles struck the heart of the Ukrainian city of Sumy as people gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday, killing at least 34 people, officials said, in the second large-scale attack to claim civilian lives in just over a week.
The two ballistic missiles hit around 10:15 a.m., officials said. Images from the scene showed lines of black body bags on the side of the road, while more bodies were seen wrapped in foil blankets among the debris. Video footage also showed fire crews fighting to extinguish the shells of burned-out cars among the rubble from damaged buildings.
The dead included two children, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said in a statement. A further 117 people were wounded, including 15 children, it said.
“Only filthy scum can act like this — taking the lives of ordinary people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. In a statement on social media, he said the first strike hit buildings belonging to a city university, while the second exploded above street level.
The head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andriy Yermak, said cluster munitions were used to kill as many people as possible. The Associated Press was unable to verify that claim.
The attack on Sumy followed a deadly April 4 missile strike on Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih that killed some 20 people, including nine children.
This seems a little uncharacteristic. Sure war is bad but Russia has overall done a pretty decent job thus far of reducing civilian casualties compared to how they could be and compared to other current global conflicts. So I wonder what happened here or what changed.
Russian side is that this was a Military Ceremony for the Celebration of the founding of the 117th Territorial Defense Brigade of the Ukrainian Forces. Supposedly this was advertised all over social media, so everyone will know it was gonna be filled with Military personnel. Absolutely stupid for the Ukrainian military to advertise an event that will take place in a civilian building when you’re in the middle of a full blown war. Reminiscent of reddit brigade.
Even more stupid to hold said publicly-advertised awards ceremony on the border of the front lines where you have absolutely zero fucking air protection.
Personally I feel like this is more of a feature of the form the Russia-Ukraine War has taken. The front line where most military targets are located is mostly void of civilians, and a lot less bomb tonnage is involved compared to Israeli or American wars.
Ukraine says Russia has dropped 51,000 bombs so far, and if we assume they are all 1 ton (most would be smaller), that’s 51,000 tons of explosives over the whole of Ukraine over 3 years. Israel has dropped 70,000 tons on Gaza (1653 times smaller) over less than 2 years.
They don’t have to try to get less civilian casualties, though I’m sure they do try a little given total civilian deaths is about 50,000 (for reference the 1 month invasion of Iraq 2 had 7,000 civilian deaths).
Some fascist operator on the Russian side probably thinks this is a video game.
Missiles hitting a city on Sunday morning in the middle of church services on a religious holiday doesn’t really sound like a “one bad apple” situation
It’s fascist operators who think war is a game all the way down
Nothing changed, this has been happening every now and then for 3 years.