Russian bomb kills 24 Ukrainian civilians waiting for pensions: ‘frankly brutal’

A Russian glide bomb struck a village in eastern Ukraine as people lined up outside to receive their pensions on Tuesday, killing at least 24 and wounding nearly two dozen others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a regional official said. The bomb hit the Donetsk region village of Yarova, Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. The village lies less than 10km (six miles) from the front line. Yarova resident Hennadii Trush said his wife was killed in the blast as she waited to collect the pension for her bedridden mother-in-law. Afterwards, Trush fled Yarova with his elderly mother, who was carried out on a stretcher. In shock and with soot still on his face, Trush wept as he described the scene of the attack. “It was beyond words,” he said. “Before, strikes landed on the outskirts. This time it was right in the centre of the village.” It was the latest Russian attack to kill civilians. More than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the three-year war, the United Nations says. With US-led peace efforts making no headway in recent months, Russia has escalated its aerial barrages of Ukraine. On Sunday, Russia hit the capital, Kyiv, with drones and missiles in the largest aerial attack since the war began on February 24, 2022. “Frankly brutal,” Zelensky said of Tuesday’s attack, urging the international community to make Russia pay economically for its full-scale invasion through additional sanctions. “The world should not remain silent,” he wrote. “The world should not remain inactive. The United States needs a reaction. Europe needs a reaction. The G20 needs a reaction. Strong action is needed so that Russia stops bringing death.” Russia has been scaling up its aerial attacks, despite US President Donald Trump’s attempts to persuade Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire and enter peace talks with Zelensky. The major barrages have prompted concerns that Ukraine is using up its air defences quicker than they can be replaced by its Western allies. US and European officials met at the US Treasury Department on Monday evening to discuss various forms of economic pressure to exert on Russia, including new sanctions and tariffs on Russian oil purchases, a person familiar with the meeting said. The talks were expected to continue on Tuesday. Glide bombs are retrofitted Soviet weapons that have laid waste to eastern Ukraine for months. Some of them now weigh 1,360kg (3,000lbs), which is six times bigger than when they were first used in battle in 2022. In Ukrainian villages, where there are no ATMs and older people are unfamiliar with digital banking, pensions are commonly delivered to the local post office on a certain day of every month. Retirees stand in line to pick up their pension in cash. Photos and video of the scene posted on official Ukrainian channels showed bodies lying around a damaged white car with yellow branding that was parked beneath trees, suggesting that it was acting as a mobile post office in the dangerous area. Officials were not immediately available to comment. The head of Ukraine’s national postal service, Ukrposhta, said the company constantly changed its security procedures. Ihor Smilianskyi said the car was parked under trees to reduce the risk of it being spotted by the enemy. “But apparently, someone gave away the coordinates,” Smilianskyi wrote on social media. Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said that 24 people were killed and 19 others wounded in the attack. “This is not warfare. This is pure terrorism,” he wrote on Telegram. Emergency responders were at the scene, he said. The territory was occupied by Russia in 2022, but was liberated by Ukraine’s armed forces in a counteroffensive later the same year. The dead were taken to a local morgue. Multiple bodies lay in the intake hall as forensic teams tried to identify them. Many had died from blast injuries. Zinaida Hrymailo went there to identify the body of her cousin, a 75-year-old woman killed in the strike. “They were all lying in one heap. My sister has been completely burned,” Hrymailo said. As the cousin died while collecting the pension, her paralysed husband remained in the village all alone, according to Hrymailo. Her cousin, she added, had been preparing to leave Yarova after collecting her pension. “Everything had been prepared, they were going to leave.”

Russian bomb kills 24 Ukrainian civilians waiting for pensions: ‘frankly brutal’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The attack on a village in the Donetsk region prompted Zelensky to urge strong action ‘so that Russia stops bringing death’

The attack on a village in the Donetsk region prompted Zelensky to urge strong action ‘so that Russia stops bringing death’