Dozens of people were injured on March 24 when Russian missiles struck a district of Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, according to Ukrainian officials.
Volodymyr Artiukh, governor of the Sumy region, said a total of 88 people, including several children, were injured in the alleged missile strike.
“Two schools fell within the impact zone,” he said in televised remarks. “I was present when our rescuers cleared the locations where the children were.”
According to Artiukh, several children were evacuated to air-raid shelters just before the attack, thereby avoiding injury.
“They were in protective structures,” he said. “All the children were rescued and evacuated to a safe place.”
Artem Kobzar, acting mayor of the city of Sumy, which sits roughly 20 miles from the Russian border, said on the Telegram messaging platform that an industrial facility—which he did not identify—had also come under Russian missile attack.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify the Ukrainian claims.
In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “prolonging this war and tormenting both our people and the entire world.”
“To force Russia into peace, strong measures and decisive actions are needed,” he said.
After the reported missile attack, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Adrii Sybiha accused Moscow of talking peace with U.S. officials “while carrying out brutal strikes on densely populated residential areas in major Ukrainian cities.”
“Instead of making hollow statements about peace, Russia must stop bombing our cities and end its war on civilians,” Sybiha said.
In recent months, Russian forces have carried out frequent attacks on energy infrastructure inside Ukrainian territory.
Moscow claims that it uses precision weapons to avoid killing civilians and that all its strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure serve a purely military purpose.
Ongoing Fighting in Kursk
Ukraine’s Sumy region shares a lengthy border with Russia’s western region of Kursk, where fierce fighting reportedly remains underway between the warring sides.On March 25, Rodion Miroshnik, a top Russian Foreign Ministry official, said Ukrainian forces were attempting to gain a foothold in several villages in Sudzha.
“The situation in that area is stable from the military point of view,” Miroshnik said in televised comments cited by Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. “Ukrainian formations are holding on to one, [or] one and a half, villages precisely in the borderland.”
He added that Russian forces were currently trying to establish a buffer zone in Ukraine’s neighboring Sumy region.
According to Miroshnik, the establishment of a buffer zone in Sumy is needed to push Ukrainian forces roughly 20 miles away from the border to prevent Ukrainian artillery attacks on civilian infrastructure in Kursk.
“Any moving target for them [Ukrainian forces] becomes a priority,” he said. “They are striking absolutely without any discrimination whether there are fire trucks, ambulances or regular cars.”
“[Russian] fighters have been expelling Ukrainian troops from our land near the Sudzha crossing as they retake control of this key sector of the state border in the region,” the official said.
For the past eight months, Ukrainian forces have held onto a sliver of Russian territory in Kursk after staging a surprise cross-border offensive last summer.
The Kremlin also accused Ukraine of being behind a March 19 drone attack on an oil depot in Kavkazskaya, in Russia’s Krasnodar region.
The depot is located near the Kropotkinskaya pumping station of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) and is key to Russia’s oil exports via the CPC, which mainly transports Kazakhstan’s oil exports.
Firefighters were still battling to contain a blaze at the facility on Monday.
The facility was also hit by a drone last month, sparking fears of a drop in oil supplies in global markets.
Ukrainian drones have repeatedly targeted Russian energy infrastructure in recent months, including in the Krasnodar region.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify the Russian claims.
