The death toll from the Russian strike on a DIY hypermarket in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, rose to 11 dead on Sunday, May 26, the day after this attack described as “despicable” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky .
Information to remember
⇒ Russia continues its bombings on the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.
⇒ After an attack on a supermarket on Saturday May 25, the human toll rose to 11 dead.
⇒ An attack in the center of Kharkiv left around twenty people injured.
11 dead in attack on supermarket
“Unfortunately, the death toll in Episentr increased to 11,” Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegoubov wrote on Telegram on Sunday, after an attack on a supermarket on Saturday, May 25. He had said the day before that at least six people had been killed, that around forty other people had been injured and that 16 were missing, after this strike carried out according to him using two guided aerial bombs. .
Images broadcast on Ukrainian social networks show the building of the Epitsentr hypermarket with a gutted roof from which a huge column of black smoke escapes, firefighters dousing the fire started by the strikes with water. “Russia dealt another brutal blow to our city of Kharkiv – a construction hypermarket – on Saturday, in the middle of the day,” denounced the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Telegram, condemning an attack in broad daylight on a target “clearly civil”.
Russian state agency TASS cited a Russian security source as saying a missile strike had destroyed a “military warehouse and command post” in the building. French President Emmanuel Macron deemed this Russian strike “unacceptable”. “France shares the Ukrainians’ pain and remains fully mobilized alongside them,” the head of state wrote on X, deploring the “numerous victims, children, women, men,” “families.”
A strike in an urban area leaves around twenty injured
On Saturday evening, a new strike hit central Kharkiv, injuring 18 people in an area where there is a post office, a hair salon and a cafe, according to the city’s mayor Igor Terekhov.
The Ukrainian president has once again called on his Western allies to provide more air defense systems to his country. “If Ukraine had sufficient air defense systems and modern combat aircraft, such Russian strikes would have been impossible,” he argued. “Every day we appeal to the world: give us air defense, save people.”
The offensive on Kharkiv continues
Russian forces also launched several attacks in the region on Saturday. They bombed the village of Kupiansk-Vouzlovyi, a railway junction in the Kharkiv region close to the border, injuring five people, the regional prosecutor’s office announced in a statement.
According to the same source, two civilian vehicles, including an ambulance, were targeted by gunfire. In the same region, Russia bombed the Kupiansk district, damaging a factory and residential buildings, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The city of Kharkiv, which had 1.5 million inhabitants before the war and is located near the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine, is regularly targeted by Moscow’s forces, who also launched the 10 May a ground offensive in the region. This offensive allowed them to seize several localities and force kyiv to send reinforcements to the sector. Ukraine, however, assured Friday that this assault had been “stopped”.
Ukrainian strike on Russian-speaking region
In the Donetsk region (east), a bombing killed a 40-year-old woman on Saturday and injured four people, according to regional governor Vadim Filachkine. In Russia, the governor of the Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, said on Saturday that two people had been killed there in a Ukrainian bombing.
“Ukrainian armed forces fired on the village of Oktyabrsky using a rocket launcher,” Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram, specifying that a “man and a woman” had been mortally “wounded by shrapnel shells”.