On Sunday morning, two Russian ballistic missiles struck a city center in northeast Ukraine, said officials, killing at least 34 people in what seemed to be the deadliest attack on civilians this year.
The intermediate strike of the city of Sumy was the last in a series of intensification of Russian attacks against urban centers in Ukraine who inflicted heavy civilian victims despite the thrust of the Trump administration for a cease-fire.
Officials said the city center was crowded with civilians taking advantage of Palm Sunday, a popular Christian celebration in Ukraine when the missiles hit. Animated streets have been transformed into carnage scenes: a video of the consequences showed mutilated and bloody bodies posing immobile cars, cars and fire debris covering the road while cries and sirens groaned in the background.
Two children were one of the dead and at least 117 people were injured, according to Ukraine emergency services.
“People were injured in the middle of the street – in cars, on public transport, in their homes”, the Minister of the Interior, Ihor Klymenko, deplored on social networks.
Volodymyr Boiko, a 69 -year -old Sumy resident, was driving a crowded bus when one of the missiles struck. He survived cuts on his face, but said that those who sat forward were not as lucky and took all the strength of the explosion. “These are only bodies, stacked on each other,” said Mr. Boiko.
He compared the scene outside the bus to a “horror film”, adding that “it was the first time in my life, I saw people who mutilate”.
The strikes occurred a little more than a week after a Russian missile blow near a playground in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, killing 19 people, including nine children. In this attack and that on Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials, Russia has used ballistic missiles, which move at high speed, which makes them very difficult to shoot down.
Overall, civil deaths have increased since the ceasefire discussions mediated by the United States began in March. The United Nations said Last week, 164 civilians were killed in Ukraine last month, an increase of 50% compared to February and 70% more than the same period a year earlier.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, from Ukraine-who accused Russia of having used cease-fire talks to get the time-said that the attack on Sumy has shown that Moscow had no real interest in a cease-fire despite the efforts of the Trump administration to make a broker.
“A strong reaction from the world is necessary. From the United States, Europe, everyone in the world that wants this war and the murders to end,” said Zelensky said Message published on Telegram. “Russia is looking for exactly this kind of terror and leads to war.”
Russia and Ukraine have undertaken to stop attacks against energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea, but an agreement has not yet entered into force. Russia has also rejected a complete and unconditional 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine had accepted at the request of the United States.
Ukraine Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday that Russia had intensified his attacks on civil zones since the start of cease-fire talks last month in Saudi Arabia.
“This is Russia’s response to all peace proposals,” Sybiha told the state news agency Ukrinform. “They delay, manipulate and play with their partners to continue the assault.”
Ukraine allies echoed these feelings on Sunday in what seemed to be a coordinated response to condemn the strike on Sumy.
“Everyone knows: this war was initiated by Russia alone. And today, it is clear that Russia alone chooses to continue – with a blatant contempt for human life, international law and diplomatic efforts of President Trump”, President Emmanuel Macron of France said on social networks.
There was no immediate commentary on the Russian army about the attack on Sumy, located only 18 miles from the Russian border. Before the war, the city housed around 250,000 people. He has since become a refuge for Ukrainian civilians fleeing villages and cities along the Russian border to escape bombardment and potential attacks.
Sumy and its surrounding region have regularly undergone Russian attacks in the past year, especially since Ukraine used the region as a base for a cross -border offensive in the Kursk region near Russia. The forces of Moscow pushed most Ukrainian Kursk troops this year, but Kyiv warned That Russia is preparing to push in the Sumy region and to open a new front in the war.
Valeria Voronenko, a 24 -year -old Sumy resident said that the inhabitants had gotten used to attacks, but that Sunday’s assault was “the worst tragedy” that the city had known over three years of war. “The whole atmosphere-people cry, cry,” she said about the scene after the attack. “It was chaos.”
Serhii Skliarenko, a 44-year-old volunteer who took care of the injured after the attack, said the strikes called Trump’s efforts to reach a cease-fire.
“The kind of peace that Trump talks about and of which the international community is talking about-is unthinkable,” he said. “They should be brought here, to see what kind of” peace “this dirt, this evil, leads.”
