Kryvyi Rih Announces Half-Week Mourning After Deadly Missile Strike

Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, has announced a half-week mourning period after a deadly Russian missile strike that killed 18, including nine children. 

The mourning will last from Monday til Wednesday, between April 7 and April 9, a local official said. 

“Children, families, the elderly... Strikes with ballistic [missiles] and ‘Shahed’ [drones] on residential areas and playgrounds... This is nothing more than a mass murder of civilians… We will always remember each of those who died. This is our shared tragedy and pain,” Head of the Kryvyi Rih Military Administration Oleksandr Vilkul said in a Telegram update on Saturday morning. 

On Friday, a Russian missile struck a residential area near a children’s playground and wounded more than two dozen others, according to Vilkul at the time.

The attack was followed by another drone strike the same evening, leading to at least 18 dead – nine of them children – and more than 60 injured in total as of Saturday. 

“There is only one reason why this continues – Russia does not want a ceasefire and we see it. The whole world sees it,” he said.

Kryvyi Rih, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the front line and has regularly been targeted by Russian drones and missiles.

A previous Russian ballistic attack on the city on Wednesday killed at least four people and wounded more than a dozen others.

Other Topics of Interest

Zelensky Gives Officials One Week to Finalize Patriot Deal, Or Face Personnel ‘Conclusions’

Zelensky said Ukraine already has a political-level agreement to purchase additional Patriot air defense systems, but implementation has stalled at the legal, financial and technical stages. The president instructed officials to accelerate the process and warned that failure to deliver results could trigger personnel changes.