Mourners gather to pay respects for children killed by Russian missile
Ukraine weeps for its children: Mourners gather to pay respects for Russian missile victims aged eight, 11 and 17 – after Putin’s forces kill 23 people with residential building strike
- A total of 23 people died when a Russian missile hit a building on Friday, April 28
- The missile strike took place in Uman, a city in Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine
Mourners have gathered to pay respects to children who were among those killed in a Russian missile attack in a Ukrainian city.
Weeping parents, relatives and friends lined the streets of Uman, in central Ukraine, on Sunday as they buried those killed after two of Vladimir Putin’s rockets struck a residential building on Friday.
A total of 23 people died in the attack, with Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko saying six children were among the dead – including eight-year-old Uliana Troichuk, 11-year-old Sofia Shulha and 17-year-old Pisarev Kiryusha.
Following the attack the Kremlin had bragged on Telegram its missiles were ‘right on target’, despite the fact they hit cities and towns that were miles away from the front lines of the conflict which has raged for more than a year.
Yesterday Sofia’s six-year-old brother Mykhayl Shulha, 6, cried and hugged relatives next to the coffin of his sister, and while other mourners held candles, crossed themselves and sang, the priest at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God ‘Quick to Hear’ waved a vessel containing incense over the coffins.
Men carry the coffins during funeral service for sister and brother Shulga Sophiya, 11, and Pisarev Kiryusha, 17, at a church in Uman
A woman carries a portrait of a child Uliana Troichuk (8), killed during the Russian attack on a residential building in the village of Apolyanka, outside Uman
Inna (centre), the mother of a child Uliana Troichuk (8), killed during the Russian attack on a residential building, reacts with other relatives and friends at the funeral
Father Fyodor Botsu, who lives close to the apartment building, said the deaths had hit the entire community hard.
‘I personally knew the children, the littlest, from when they were very young, and I personally baptised them in this church.
‘I’m worried with everyone since I have children and I’m a citizen of this country and have been living in this city for 15 years.’
READ MORE HERE – ‘Right on target’: Russia brags about missile strike on Ukraine that killed civilians while they slept including mother and her two-year-old daughter
He said he prayed ‘that the war should end and peace should come to our homes, city and country.’
At the damaged building in Uman, people brought flowers and photos of the victims.
Russia’s 14-month-long war brought more deaths elsewhere Sunday.
The governor of a Russian region bordering Ukraine said four people were killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack.
The rockets hit homes in the village of Suzemka, nine kilometers (six miles) from the Ukrainian border, said Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz.
He said two other residents were injured and that defence systems had knocked down some of the incoming shells.
Bryansk and the neighboring Belgorod region have experienced sporadic cross-border shelling throughout the war.
In March, two people were reported killed in what officials said was an incursion by Ukrainian saboteurs in the Bryansk region.
Also Sunday, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said his Kherson region in Ukraine came under Russian artillery fire 27 times in the past 24 hours, killing one civilian.
An expected spring counteroffensive by Ukraine could be concentrated in the Kherson region, a gateway to Crimea and other Russian-occupied territory in the southern Ukrainian mainland.
Ukrainian forces drove Russian forces out of the regional capital Kherson last year, a significant defeat for Russia.
A woman carries her child past a damaged residential building in Uman after the attack on Friday
Rescue workers try to save people trapped in the building after it was hit by a Russian missile
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the counteroffensive wouldn’t wait for the delivery of all promised military equipment.
READ MORE HERE – Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea ‘was preparing ground for counteroffensive’: Russian fears for peninsula mount after Zelensky said he would try to retake it and preparations are ‘almost complete’
‘I would have really wanted to wait for everything that was promised,’ Zelensky told Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian journalists. ‘But it happens that the terms (of weapons deliveries and counteroffensive), unfortunately, do not coincide a little bit. And, I will say frankly, we pay attention to the weather.’
Ukraine is particularly hopeful that it will receive Western fighter jets, but Zelensky said his forces wouldn’t delay the counteroffensive for that, so as not to ‘reassure Russia that we still have a few months to train on the planes, and only then will we start.’
Zelensky said he spoke Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron about the weapons supply, and was pleased with its ‘speed and specificity.’
Macron’s office said he reiterated France’s commitment to provide Ukraine ‘all the aid necessary to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ and discussed long-term European military aid.
The head of the Wagner mercenary group that is leading Russia’s battle in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut gave an even more precise timetable for the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian military will launch the counteroffensive by May 15 because by then strong rains will have stopped and the soil will be dry enough for tanks and artillery to move, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview with a Russian journalist posted Saturday.
In other battlefield developments, Ukraine’s northern command said the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, which border Bryansk and Belgorod, came under fire 11 times during the night on Sunday.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 48-year-old resident of Nikopol was killed, and two were injured, in Russian shelling, according to Gov. Serhii Lysak.
He said six multi-story buildings and six private houses were damaged, as well as several other buildings, gas pipelines, and a power line.
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