Russia’s fatal strike on vigil ‘may be war crime’

Groza – A Russian strike killed at least 51 people gathered for a wake in northeastern Ukraine on Thursday, provoking outrage from Western leaders for what the UN said could be a war crime.

The mourners for a fallen Ukrainian soldier had gathered at a cafe in the village of Groza, in the Kharkiv region.

People who had been in a shop in the same building were also killed in the attack on the small village. A spokesperson for the regional assembly, quoted by Ukrainian media, said it was the single deadliest attack since the start of Russia’s invasion.

AFP journalists at the scene of the aftermath saw blackened and dismembered bodies spread out on the ground opposite the ruins of the cafe.

Police and soldiers loaded white body bags of unidentifiable bodies onto trucks that would take them to Kharkiv for DNA testing.

“My son was just found without a head, without arms, without legs, without anything. They recognised him from his documents,” Volodymyr Mukhovaty, 70, said.

His wife and daughter-in-law were also attending the wake, he said, acknowledging he had “little hope” of finding them alive.

“I lived with my wife for 48 years,” he said. “I will not last long alone.”

A six-year-old child was also among the victims, said Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, who added that 60 people had been attending the memorial service.

The soldier, whose wake it was, had been killed a month after Russia invaded. He had been buried in the southern city of Dnipro – away from his home village, then under Russian occupation.

He was reburied in Groza on Thursday. His wife and son, also a soldier, were both killed in the strike, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office was quoted as saying by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Klymenko said initial evidence showed an Iskander missile had been used. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was attending a European summit in Spain, said he had no doubts that the strike had been deliberate.

“The Russian military could not fail to know where they were hitting,” he said. “It was not a blind strike.”

Zelensky also said he had secured agreements from several countries to provide Kyiv with more air defence systems and artillery, “Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain – thank you!” he said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced that Berlin would supply Kyiv with a new Patriot air-defence system, and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock later posted on X that Germany would “do everything for #Ukraine to protect itself from Putin’s missile terror”.

Denise Brown, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, stressed that “intentionally directing an attack against civilians or civilian objects is a war crime”. –