Russia Bombs Market in Kharkiv, Killing at Least 6 and Wounding 40

Russian bombs struck a commercial facility in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding 40, local officials said. Seventeen people are also missing, according to police.

The attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city comes as Russia presses an offensive in the northeast, and just two days after a missile barrage killed seven people at a local printing plant.

Around 4 p.m. local time, two glide bombs launched from Russia’s Belgorod region hit Epicenter, a home improvement and hardware chain, Kharkiv’s regional prosecutor said on Telegram.

Glide bombs are Soviet-era weapons, sometimes weighing a half-ton, that are equipped with wings and guidance systems that allow them to fly long distances. Ukrainian air defense systems have struggled to intercept them. The attack on Saturday involved two UMPB D-30 bombs, the latest version of the weapon, the prosecutor said.

Authorities posted videos purportedly showing the strike on the facility, as well as a fire that broke out after the attack. Local emergency services said the fire was brought under control two hours later.

“Russia delivered another brutal blow to our Kharkiv – on a construction hypermarket – on Saturday, just in the middle of the day,” the head of Kharkiv’s regional administration, Oleh Synyehubov, wrote on Telegram.

“Not a single military facility” was near the store, he said.

Several hours later, another missile hit the city center and injured 18, including a 13-year-old boy the prosecutor’s office said was in “serious condition.”

Kharkiv is located about 20 miles from the Russian border, and has come under attack as Russian forces try to push out Ukrainian troops to create a buffer zone.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media that Saturday’s attack on Kharkiv was “another manifestation of Russian madness – there is simply no other way to call it.”

“Only madmen” like Russian President Vladimir Putin “are capable of killing and terrorizing people in such a vile way,” Zelensky said, repeating calls for Ukraine to receive additional air defense systems from its international partners to defend from the Kremlin’s air attacks.

“When we tell the world leaders that Ukraine needs sufficient air defense protection … we are talking about literally preventing such terrorist attacks,” Zelensky wrote.

Later Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the strike on the store was “unacceptable,” in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“France shares the pain of Ukrainians and remains fully mobilized alongside them,” Macron wrote.

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Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report.

(c) Washington Post