Russian attack kills 24 in Ukraine during pension distribution

A Russian strike killed 24 people waiting for pension payments in Yarova, a frontline town of eastern Ukraine. Photo / Roman Chop, First Center of the Information and Communication support of the Land Forces of Ukraine, AFP

A Russian strike has killed 24 people waiting for pension payments in a front-line town of eastern Ukraine where Russian forces are massing forces for a large-scale offensive, officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video showing several corpses strewn on the ground by a burned-out minivan and playground – images AFP could not independently verify.

“A brutally savage Russian airstrike with an aerial bomb on the rural settlement of Yarova in the Donetsk region. Directly on people. Ordinary civilians. At the very moment when pensions were being disbursed,” Zelenskyy wrote online.

Moscow has claimed the industrial region as part of Russia despite not having full control over it.

Kyiv says the Kremlin has massed 100,000 troops at a key part of the front line for a fresh offensive.

The Interior Ministry said 24 people were killed, while the army said Moscow had dropped a glide bomb – weapons fixed with wings to help them fly over dozens of kilometres.

They are part of an arsenal developed by Russia to hit deeper into Ukrainian territory and stretch the front line.

Yarova is about 8km from the front line and had a pre-war population of around 1900 people.

AFP journalists in eastern Ukraine saw mourners weeping outside a morgue where staff had laid out at least 13 corpses in black body bags.

Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s allies to issue a response to the attack.

“A response is needed from the United States. A response is needed from Europe. A response is needed from the G20,” he said.

‘Strong actions’

“Strong actions are needed to make Russia stop bringing death,” Zelenskyy added, while the prosecutor general said it had opened a war crime investigation.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow or the Kremlin on the strike.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, meanwhile, announced that Berlin would provide Ukraine with “several thousand long-range drones” to help it repel Russia’s invasion.

Germany was “expanding Ukraine’s capabilities to weaken Russia’s war machinery in the hinterland, providing an effective defence” by boosting support for the procurement of long-range drones, he added.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said on Tuesday that the United States is willing to take “strong measures against Russia” over Ukraine, but added that “our European partners must fully join us in this to be successful”.

US President Donald Trump has said he has tried to find a way to end the war in recent weeks, including threatening on Sunday to impose more sanctions on Russia, but has little to show for his efforts.

In Ukraine, a spokesman for the postal network, Ukrposhta, confirmed that one of its vehicles was damaged in the attack and that its department head, identified as Yulia, had been hospitalised.

Ukrposhta, which delivers public services in front-line regions, said it would change how it distributes pensions and basic services there.

Russia has been steadily advancing in the eastern Donetsk region for months, concentrating its firepower on the territory and deploying troops from other parts of the front line, Kyiv has said.

Authorities in Donetsk have been appealing to civilians to flee the fighting since the early days of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said this week that Russian forces outnumbered Ukrainian troops threefold in some areas of the front, and by six times in regions where Moscow has concentrated its forces.

The strike comes just days after a Russian missile crashed into the Ukrainian Government headquarters in central Kyiv, the first time the complex had been hit in the three-and-a-half-year war.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions forced from their homes in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

-Agence France-Presse