Anger and outrage gripped the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday as it held funerals for some of the 20 people, including nine children, killed by a Russian missile that tore through apartment buildings and blasted a playground.
More than 70 were wounded in the attack on Friday last week on Kryvyi Rih. The children were playing on swings and in a sandbox in a tree-lined park at the time. Bodies were strewn across the grass.
“We are not asking for pity,” Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, wrote on Telegram as Kryvyi Rih mourned. “We demand the world’s outrage.”
Photo: AP
The UN Human Rights Office in Ukraine said it was the deadliest single verified strike harming children since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It was also one of the deadliest attacks so far this year.
Ukraine has consented to a ceasefire proposed weeks ago by Washington, but Russia is still negotiating with the US its terms for accepting a truce in the more than three-year war.
US President Donald Trump has voiced frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the continued fighting, and Ukrainian officials want him to compel Putin to stop. Trump vowed during his election campaign last year to bring a swift end to the war.
“We’re talking to Russia. We’d like them to stop,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “I don’t like the bombing.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday reaffirmed that Putin supports a ceasefire proposed by Trump, but wants Russian conditions to be met.
“President Putin indeed backs the ceasefire idea, but it’s necessary to first answer quite a few questions,” Peskov said.
In Kryvyi Rih, 59-year-old teacher Iryna Kholod remembered Arina and Radyslav, both seven years old and killed in the strike, as being “like little suns in the classroom.”
Radyslav was proud to be part of a school campaign collecting pet food for stray animals, she said.
“He held the bag like it was treasure. He wanted to help,” Kholod said.
After Friday evening, “two desks in my classroom were empty forever,” she said, adding that she still has unopened birthday gifts for them.
“How do I tell parents to return their textbooks? How do I teach without them?” she asked.
Russian missile and drone tactics continue to evolve, making it harder to shoot them down, Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force command, said on national television.
Russia’s Iranian-designed Shahed drones have undergone significant upgrades, while Moscow is also modernizing its ballistic missiles, he said.
Only the US Patriot missile defense system can help prevent attacks such as the one in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskiy said late on Sunday.
He said he had instructed his defense and foreign affairs ministers to “work bilaterally on air defense, especially with the United States, which has sufficient potential to help stop any terror.”
Ukraine is to send a team to Washington this week to begin negotiations on a new draft of a deal that would give the US access to Ukraine’s rare earths, Ukrainian Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Failure to conclude a deal has hamstrung Ukrainian efforts to secure pledges of continuing US military support.
In Kryvyi Rih on Monday, Nataliia Slobodeniuk recalled her 15-year-old student Danylo Nikitskyi as “a spark” who energized the classroom, and helped organize school trips and other occasions.
Danylo died alongside his girlfriend, Alina Kutsenko, also 15.
“They were holding hands,” said Roman Nikitskyi, Danylo’s father.
“If Danylo was going, half the class went too,” the teacher said. “That’s how loved he was.”
She choked up as she spoke of her feeling of powerlessness after the attack.
“You live through their joy, their sadness, and now this pain, it tears you apart and you realize there’s nothing you can do. Nothing to fix it. You just carry the pain forever,” she said.
An air raid alert interrupted a planned memorial ceremony in the city — a reminder of the continuing threat for civilians.
The frustration hit home for Nataliia Freylikh, the teacher of nine-year-old Herman Tripolets, who was also killed in the attack. A minute of silence was held in the children’s school, where teachers, classmates and families gathered. Nearly a hundred people stood grief-stricken together.
“Even mourning him properly is impossible,” Freylikh said.
From the school, the mourners walked to the church for the funeral liturgy for Tripolets — and bid a final farewell to the children who never made it home.
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