Five people were killed and 37 wounded when a Russian missile struck a central square in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
People had been on their way to church to celebrate a religious holiday when the strike took place, the ministry said, adding that 11 of the wounded were children.
“A Russian missile hit right in the centre of the city, in our Chernihiv. A square, the polytechnic university, a theatre,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was on a working visit to Sweden, posted on the Telegram messaging service.
“An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss,” he added.
A short video accompanying Zelenskyy’s post showed debris scattered across a square in front of the regional drama theatre, where cars were heavily damaged. One body could be briefly seen in the video slouched inside a car.
Russia has attacked Ukrainian cities far from the front line with missiles and drones as part of the full-scale invasion it launched in February 2022.
Overnight into Saturday, Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 15 out of 17 Russian drones targeting Ukraine’s northern, central and western regions.
The deputy governor of the western Khmelnytskyi region, Serhii Tiurin, said two people were wounded and dozens of buildings damaged by an attack.
In the northwestern Zhytomyr region, a Russian drone attack targeted an infrastructure facility and caused a fire, but no casualties were reported, said Gov. Vitalii Bunechko.
