Russian missile strike on Ukrainian president’s hometown: 18 dead, including 9 children, 61 injured

Kathmandu– A Russian ballistic missile strike on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih has killed 18 people, including nine children, officials say.

After an overnight rescue operation on Saturday, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said 61 people were injured.

According to Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih, the missile strike occurred on Friday in a residential area near a children’s playground.

Unverified videos on social media showed bodies lying on the street, while another showed smoke rising into the evening sky.

Social media videos from the scene showed a car burning and people screaming.

’18… That’s how many people were killed when the Russians fired missiles at Kryvyi Rih. Nine of them were children,” Lisak said on Telegram. He said 12 children were injured in Friday’s attack.

“This is the kind of pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy,” Lisak said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said “a high-explosive missile hit a restaurant” in the city, where “a meeting of training commanders and Western instructors was taking place.”

On Saturday, Russian air defense units said they had intercepted and destroyed 49 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing for a quick end to the more than three-year-old war, but despite talks with both sides, his administration has failed to broker a ceasefire.

Zelensky said the missile strike on the city showed Russia had no interest in stopping the full-scale offensive that began in February 2022.

“There is only one reason why this is continuing: Russia does not want a ceasefire, and we see it. The whole world sees it,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a US-Ukrainian proposal for an unconditional and complete ceasefire in March. The Kremlin has called for a US-proposed ceasefire in the Black Sea, which is conditional on the West lifting some sanctions.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Trump could not “fall into the trap of endless negotiations” with Russia over the offensive.

“We will know soon, not in months, whether Russia is serious about peace,” he said.

In his evening address, Zelensky accused Russia of treating diplomacy as “empty words.” “A ceasefire could have been achieved by now, and it is Putin who is rejecting it,” he said.

– Deliberate attack –

Kryvyi Rih, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, is about 60km from the front lines and has been a regular target of Russian drones and missiles.

Zelensky was born in the industrial city. The pre-war population was about 600,000.

Andriy Kovalenko, a Ukrainian official tasked with countering disinformation, described the missile involved in the attack on Krivoy Rog as an “Iskander.”

The Iskander is a Russian ballistic missile system with a range of up to 500.

“This is a deliberate attack to kill a large number of people,” Kovalenko said.

In a separate drone strike in Krivoy Rog, Lisak said a 56-year-old woman was killed and seven others were wounded. Agency