Russia accuses Ukraine of causing 25 deaths in bombing of occupied territory

The Kremlin accused Volodymyr Zelensky’s army of shelling the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories of Kherson and Luhansk on Friday (7), leaving at least 25 people dead.

Kherson and Luhansk were among four Ukrainian territories that Russia claimed to have annexed in September 2022 following its full-scale invasion. The international community, with the exception of North Korea and Syria, does not recognize the annexation.

Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of the southern region of Kherson, accused Ukrainian forces of killing 22 people, including a 9-year-old child, in the bombing of the small town of Sadove on Friday.

Saldo said Ukrainian forces carried out a missile attack on a grocery store and a civilian area in Sadove. The supermarket, he noted, was packed with customers and employees when it was hit. The first attack was carried out with an aerial bomb supplied by France; the second, with a US-supplied HIMARS missile, he told the Russia 24 channel.

Meanwhile, the Russian-appointed head of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik, said on Telegram that a Ukrainian attack in Luhansk killed three people and injured 35 others.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the attacks a “cynical and bloody crime” and blamed Washington for giving Kiev a “green light” “to kill civilians with Western weapons.”

Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the military administration of the Kherson region, rejected the Russian claims in a Telegram post on Friday, calling them “a vivid example of how Russian propaganda works.” Prokudin pointed to Saldo incorrectly citing the attack in the Kherson region as having happened on Saturday instead of Friday, in an insinuation that the claim was fabricated.

Artem Lysohor, head of the Luhansk region’s military administration, said the Ukrainian attacks took place “exclusively against the occupiers’ old and well-equipped military infrastructure” and blamed Russian air defense systems for intercepting the rockets over civilian neighborhoods, suggesting that the Falling debris caused casualties.

Russia has been pressing in the east, which it seeks to fully capture, as it continues its attack on the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine after launching a surprise offensive last month.

Ukraine has recorded the highest monthly number of civilian casualties in almost a year, with the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) recording a “significant increase” (31%) in civilian deaths in Ukraine in May, compared with April.

“More than half of May’s deaths occurred in the city and region of Kharkiv, where Russian armed forces launched a new ground offensive on May 10,” said HRMMU head Danielle Bell.

Bell attributed the increase to Russia’s decision to use “air-dropped bombs and missiles in populated areas, such as communities close to the front line and the city of Kharkiv.”