During religious services on Palm Sunday, April 13, Russian forces launched a missile strike on the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy, near the border between the two sovereign countries. Emergency services on Sunday night said the missiles killed 34 people, including two children, and wounded 117, including 15 children.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, said on social media that the attack on civilian targets “crosses any line of decency.”
Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, paid tribute to the victims of the “horrifying Russian missile attack on Sumy”.
“This is a tragic reminder of why President Trump and his administration are putting so much time and effort into trying to end this war and achieve durable peace,” he added.
Rubio and others on Trump’s negotiating team have attempted to persuade Russian officials in Saudi Arabia to agree to a ceasefire in two meetings, but have continued to fail.
While the US president on the campaign trail had regularly promised to end Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in “24 hours,” the war has dragged on, and Ukrainian civilian deaths have mounted since Trump’s inauguration nearly three months ago.
Trump, a convicted felon who regularly praises Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin, has not added any additional sanctions on Moscow since taking over. Meanwhile, Russia remains one of the few countries in the world exempted from the Trump administration’s new tariffs.
Statista.com places the number of Ukrainian civilians killed in the war as nearly 13,000, with some 700 of them children, since the start of the war.
AFP journalists on the scene reported that the dead in Sumy were seen covered in silver sheets where rescuers worked through the rubble of a building near a destroyed trolleybus.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that eight of the 68 injured in hospitals were in serious condition.
“In addition to the university, the strike damaged five apartment buildings, cafes, shops, and the district court. In total, the Russian attack damaged 20 buildings,” Zelensky said.
“Only completely deranged scum can do something like this,” said Zelensky in his evening address.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office Andrii Sybiha said: “For the second month in a row, Russia has refused to accept the US proposal for a full ceasefire, which Ukraine unconditionally accepted on March 11. Instead, Russia ramps up its terror.”
“We urge partners to provide Ukraine with additional air defense capabilities and increase pressure on Moscow. Strength is the only language they can understand and the only way to put an end to the horrific terror,” Sybiha said.