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.
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The West has already declared this behaviour in war to be acceptable, if not expected, of any serious military force. Especially coming from the kinds of people who see Ukraine as worthy of pity but Gaza not.
“Only filthy scum can act like this — taking the lives of ordinary people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
I don’t even have it in me to be mad at the fractal hypocrisy anymore, it’s a waste of breath. This fucking sucks, this war needs to end, and everyone responsible for dragging it out redacted
You can only say that here because every other social media site would have dogpiled you for even suggesting he’s being a hypocrite.
Deeply sad. Hopefully this war will end as quickly as possible.
There was a military awards ceremony.
The mayor of Konotop in the Sumy region demanded that the head of the Sumy regional administration kneel and apologize by 18:00, resign, and also dismiss the head of the local SBU .
Otherwise, the mayor of Konotop promised to tell the truth about what happened during the missile strike on Sumy.
The attack in Sumy was carried out at the awards ceremony of the 117th brigade of the Troops of Ukraine, timed to coincide with the anniversary of its formation on April 13 - Mosiychuk.
According to the former Ukrainian MP, in addition to the military, civilians with children were also present at the award ceremony. Apparently, this is what causes the many civilian casualties.
“I hope that the head of the OVA Artyukh and MP Ananchenko, who so wanted to get some PR at the festive awarding of the soldiers of the 117th brigade of the TRO on the occasion of the 7th anniversary, are already being detained in Sumy. Artyukh and Ananchenko were promoting the awarding in Sumy and gathered there not only the military but also civilians, in particular children ! Scum and scum!” Mosiychuk wrote.
Holy shit. There are your actual human shields
Always have been. There’s been footage of Ukrainians firing shells within hospitals and schools, Amnesty inspected a small sample and found something ridiculous like 7 out of 10 showing overwhelming signs of military usage. Soldiers go into hospitals to take their meals there, etc.
Edit: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/ukraine-ukrainian-fighting-tactics-endanger-civilians 22 out of 27 schools. 85%
It’s not surprising at all given both Ukraine’s and Israel’s proximity to US intelligence services. They love weaponizing the conventions of war while violating them fragrantly.
Once again, the traditional news media reporting I’ve been unintentionally exposed to on this strike mentioned nothing about the military personnel - but that level of propaganda is normal in the west. I’ve lost count of the number of times the BBC reports a strike on a hotel or a cafe only for their own videos to show injured military personnel and foreign mercenaries in the rubble.
This strike however seems uncharacteristic in it’s callousness, and seems unusually mean spirited from the Russians. Civilian casualties from the strikes have been pretty minimal so far in the war, other than the occasional Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile intercepting the side of an apartment.
Perhaps the terror drone raids the Ukrainians having been sending deep into Russia to target random civilian buildings have rekalibrated their tolerance for collateral.
This strike however seems uncharacteristic in it’s callousness, and seems unusually mean spirited from the Russians.
Idk if that’s the case here, but in the past Ukrainian missiles struck friendly targets several times and everything was immediately reported as Russian strike.
EDIT: seems it’s not the case here, apparently it was military awards ceremony which was widely advertised and open to public. Very fucking smart thing to do when opponent have air domination. Unless they were trying to achieve this exact effect.
People forget that the reason these conventions of war exist isn’t because they’re convenient to The Bad Guys™, it’s because if you keep doing that shit enough times you’re signaling everyone to do it to you.
Like nukes, nobody should use them ever. Because once you do, why wouldn’t you expect it in return.
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.
Russia has overall done a pretty decent job thus far of reducing civilian casualties
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.
Truly despise this conflict.
Boris Johnson has so much blood on his hands
I hate to hear all the weird war profiteers and general psychos who cheer this on. It’s so stupid we waste all this time and mental energy to design and build entire infrastructure that has the sole purpose of stuff like this.
The Americans will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
