Taking refuge in a school was not enough. Sixty people, all civilians according to the Ukrainian authorities, died on Saturday after the bombing of a school in the Luhansk region, in the east of the country. Only about twenty villagers survived this bombardment, which “completely destroyed” school, according to Serguiï Gaïda, the governor of the region. Franceinfo takes stock of this bloody strike attributed to the Russian army.
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Nearly a hundred people had hidden in this school
The facts occurred on Saturday May 7 in the village of Bilohorivka, located about a hundred kilometers northeast of the city of Luhansk, the regional capital under the control of the Russian army. According to the Ukrainian authorities, a bomb dropped by the Russian air force targeted a school in the center of this village, where 90 people had hidden to flee the bombardments. The first assessment given by the local authorities, which reported 60 dead, was taken up on Sunday by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, during a videoconference intervention at a G7 summit.
Interviewed by Tea Guardian Sunday (link in English)the governor of the Luhansk region clarified that the building had “totally collapsed” when typing. “An aerial bomb is not a missile, Sergey also said Gaida, such an explosion produces extreme temperatures.” On the spot, the intensity of the blaze and the nightfall considerably slowed down the Ukrainian firefighters. For fear of being spotted by the Russian army and targeted by new bombardments, the rescuers chose not to turn on their flashlights and thus had to wait for daybreak to find any survivors, in vain.
Shelling intensified in eastern Ukraine
Strikes have intensified in recent days in the east of the country, which Russia could be tempted to annex. This massive use of bombs and missiles has sometimes been explained by the approach of May 9, a key date for Vladimir Putin. Residents of some towns like Lyman in Donetsk Oblast have no choice but to leave.
On Saturday, another strike attributed to the Russian army hit a village located a few kilometers from Bilohorivka, and more specifically a house housing a dozen people, said the governor of the region. Because of a “highest probability of bombardments of Ukrainian cities on May 8 and 9″several regional governors have chosen to cancel World War II commemorations, originally scheduled for Sunday across the country.
For the Ukrainian government, Vladimir Putin “no longer has any limits”
A children’s hospital on March 10, a theater in Mariupol on March 17: the list of buildings bombed while they were sheltering civilians is growing and angering the Ukrainian authorities. Faced with the leaders of the G7 on Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky castigated the “heavy shelling” from yesterday,“as if it were not May 8 (…), when the key word should be peace for all normal people”. “Ukraine and the free world will remember this”, he launched.
“It is absolutely clear that Vladimir Putin no longer has any limits”, alerted Olha Stefanishyna, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, in an interview with franceinfo. According to the latter, Moscow seeks to control the Donbass area and all of southern Ukraine,“whatever the cost”. “Nothing can stop it, nothing can stop it, she lamented, except the Ukrainian army and the pressure of financial sanctions against its government.”
As the European Union continues to harden its stance vis-à-vis Russia, the G7 countries announced on Sunday, through the White House (document in English)want to ban or phase out their imports of Russian oil.
In his traditional speech on May 9, Vladimir Putin again justified the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army on Monday. “NATO was getting closer to our territories. (…) Russia did everything to prevent the aggressor from being pushed back”, in particular declared the Russian autocrat, before attending a gigantic military parade on Red Square, in Moscow.