Global Courant 2023-04-30 22:00:46
UMAN, Ukraine –
Relatives and friends wept next to coffins on Sunday as they buried children and others killed in a Russian missile strike on this central Ukrainian city as fighting claimed more lives elsewhere.
Nearly all 23 victims of Friday’s attack died when two rockets struck an apartment building in Uman. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said six children were among the dead.
Mykhayl Shulha, 6, cried and hugged family members next to the coffin of his 11-year-old sister Sofia Shulha during Sunday’s funeral, while others paid respects to a 17-year-old boy.
While mourners held candles, crossed crosses and sang, the priest in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Quick to Hear” waved a vessel of incense over the coffins. He said the deaths have hit the entire community hard.
“I live nearby,” Father Fyodor Botsu said. “I personally knew the children, the smallest, from when they were very young, and I personally baptized them in this church. I am concerned about everyone since I have children and I am a citizen of this country and live in this city for 15 years.”
He said he had prayed “that the war would end and that peace would come to our homes, city and country.”
At the damaged building in Uman, people brought flowers and pictures of the victims.
Russia’s 14-month war has claimed more deaths elsewhere on Sunday.
The governor of a Russian region bordering Ukraine said four people were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike. The rockets struck homes in the village of Suzemka, nine kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said. He said two other residents were wounded and defense systems knocked down some of the incoming shells.
Bryansk and the adjacent Belgorod region experienced sporadic cross-border shelling during the war. In March, two people were reportedly killed in what officials say was a raid by Ukrainian saboteurs in the Bryansk region.
Also on Sunday, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said his Kherson region in Ukraine had come under Russian artillery fire 27 times in the past 24 hours, killing one civilian.
An expected spring counter-offensive by Ukraine could be centered in the Kherson region, a gateway to Crimea and other Russian-held territory in the southern Ukrainian mainland. Ukrainian troops drove Russian troops from the regional capital of Kherson last year, a major defeat for Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the counter-offensive would not wait for the delivery of all promised military equipment.
“I really wanted to wait for everything that was promised,” Zelenskyy told Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian journalists. “But it happens that the conditions (of arms deliveries and counter-offensive) unfortunately do not coincide a bit. And, I’ll be honest, we watch the weather.”
Ukraine is especially hopeful that it will receive Western fighter jets, but Zelensky said his troops will not delay the counter-offensive for that, so as not to “assure Russia that we have a few more months to train on the planes, and only then will we We begin.”
Zelenskyy said he spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron about the arms delivery on Sunday and was pleased with the “speed and specificity”.
Macron’s office said he reiterated France’s commitment to provide Ukraine with “all assistance necessary to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity”, and discussed long-term European military aid.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group leading his country’s battle in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut gave an even more precise timetable for the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Ukrainian army will launch the counter-offensive by May 15, because by then the heavy rains will have stopped and the ground will be dry enough for tanks and artillery to move, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview with a Russian journalist posted on Saturday.
In other developments on the battlefield, Ukraine’s northern command said the regions of Sumy and Chernihiv, which border Bryansk and Belgorod, came under fire 11 times on Sunday night.
