A Russian strike on a shop killed at least 49 people in a village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Thursday, officials say, one of the deadliest attacks since the conflict began.
Moscow’s forces targeted a cafe and a shop in Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, at around 1:15 p.m. local time (6:15 a.m. ET), according to Oleh Synehubov, a regional military official.
Scenes emerged of emergency workers wading through dense rubble in the aftermath of the attack.
The bodies of the deceased, including a 6-year-old boy, were removed from the destroyed infrastructure, Synehubov said. Doctors are treating the six people injured by the strike.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was “a demonstrably brutal Russian crime – a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely deliberate terrorist attack.”
“Russian terror must be stopped. Anyone who helps Russia circumvent sanctions is a criminal. Everyone who still supports Russia is supporting evil,” Zelensky said on the sidelines of a European leaders summit in Granada, in southern Spain.
“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for one thing only: to make its genocidal aggression the new normal for the whole world.”
Ukranian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called the attack “brutal and cynical.”
“Dozens of people were killed, including a child. It is impossible to describe this horror in words,” he posted on Telegram.
“We must stop the Russian terror so that enemy missiles and shells do not take any more lives or injure any more people. This can only be done in a coordinated and united manner, with the help and support of our partners,” Shmyhal added.
The strike appears to have been the deadliest against Ukraine’s civilian population since an attack in Kramatorsk, in early 2022. At least 50 people, including five children, died after Russian forces hit a railway station in the eastern Ukrainian city.
It is unclear what weapon was used to carry out the assault in Hroza. Ukrainian officials have used different terms to describe the bombardment.
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