A Russian rocket has killed at least 51 people in northeastern Ukraine as they held a memorial service, Kyiv says, in one of the deadliest such attacks in months.
Dozens of people were in a cafe and shop in the Kharkiv village of Hroza when the missile struck.
President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the attack in the as a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism”.
Presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak and Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said a six-year-old boy was among the dead, and six other people were wounded. Emergency crews were searching the rubble of damaged buildings.
Around 330 residents live in the village, the interior minister Ihor Klymenko said: “From every family, from every household, there were people present at this commemoration. This is a terrible tragedy.”
It comes as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has been forced into a major retreat from a Crimea port, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War. At least 10 of Vladimir Putin’s prized warships have retreated 237 miles to “bases further in the Russian rear” following intensified Ukrainian attacks in recent weeks.