The attack, which took place on Thursday on the sidelines of the funeral of a Ukrainian soldier, also injured six people and was strongly condemned by the international community. “Russian atrocities are reaching an even more sinister level,” responded EU diplomat Josep Borrell.
A new deadly attack. Fifty-one people, including a 6-year-old child, were killed and six others injured on Thursday October 5 by a Russian strike in Groza, a small village in eastern Ukraine. This assessment is definitive since “rescue and search operations have been completed”, announced the State Emergency Service. Franceinfo summarizes what we know about this new strike which has been firmly condemned by the international community.
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A Russian missile hits a village early in the afternoon
Groza is a village of around 300 inhabitants, located near Kharkiv, 35 km west of the front line. The attack took place around 1:15 p.m. local time (12:15 p.m. Paris time), said the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Synegoubov. It hit a food store and a cafe, the governor said, which were completely destroyed. According to Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, around sixty people were in the establishment. “There were villagers in the store and villagers in the cafe were also gathered” for a reception organized after the funeral of one of their own, said the minister.
>> REPORT. In Groza, hit by a Russian strike, desolation, death and suspicion
Among the victims of the strike are the wife and son of the Ukrainian soldier killed in combat whose funeral was being celebrated, according to a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office cited by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. A child born in 2017 and 48 other people died in this attack. Six others were injured. The operations rescue and search operations have been completed, the State Emergency Service said at the end of the day.
The trail of an informant studied
An advisor to the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, denounced on X (formerly Twitter) a new “insidious (Russian) attack which has no military logic” and which must serve as “reminder to all those who are ready to smile and shake hands with war criminal Putin at international conferences”. According to preliminary information, the bombing was carried out with an Iskander ballistic missile, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry assured. This same type of missile had already struck civilians in June in Kramatorsk and killed 12 people.
The authorities are considering “several versions” to explain this attack, said the police officer in charge of the investigation. Particularly the one leading to an informant like in Kramatorsk, because of the precision and timing of the strike. “One of them is that someone could have given the coordinates (of the cafe) to the Russians. Our job is to find out if someone could have given those coordinates and known that there was a gathering at that time.”, estimated the police officer, quoted by AFP. This is the deadliest attack in the Kharkiv region since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. Three days of mourning have been declared.
The international community denounces “atrocities”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking from Granada, Spain, where he was attending a summit of European leaders, denounced a “inhumane terrorist attack”. “It is possible to protect people against such attacks (…) only with the help of anti-aircraft defense”, he added. He notably mentioned the delivery to Ukraine of a new American Patriot system and insisted that the main European countries help Ukraine in order to avoid new tragedies of this type.
Russian missile struck an ordinary grocery store in the Kupiansk district of the Kharkiv region. This was a fully deliberate, demonstrative, and brutal terrorist attack.
As of now, more than 51 people have been reported dead. My condolences to all those who have lost their loved… pic.twitter.com/yxIW2Xwy35
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 5, 2023
The international community reacted strongly to this attack. Berlin assured that Germany would “everything possible” so that “Ukraine can protect itself from the terror of Putin’s missiles”, wrote German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on X (formerly Twitter). French diplomacy condemned with “the greatest firmness” the Moscow strike, adding in a statement that“By deliberately targeting the Ukrainian civilian population, Russia is once again guilty of atrocities constituting war crimes”. “Russian atrocities reach an even more sinister level”added the head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Intentional attacks against civilians are war crimes.
With the bloody attack at civilians in Hroza/Kupiansk, Russian atrocities are brought to yet another grim level. Russia proves again it has no intention to let up in its terror against Ukrainian people.https://t.co/vdHGI6nqeM— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) October 5, 2023
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recalled that “attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure [étaie]are prohibited by international humanitarian law and[evai]”stop immediately”. On the American side, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre affirmed that the United States must “continue to support the Ukrainian people because this is the terrible reality in which they live” on a daily basis, while Joe Biden is trying to get additional funds from Congress to help kyiv.