Dozens of people were killed or injured, including two children, when a busy market came under attack in a neighborhood of the Russia-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, the region’s Russia-appointed government said Sunday.
Russia blames Ukraine for the attack in Tekstilshchik, that according to Russian officials killed at least 27 people and injured 25 others. Ukraine has not commented on the event and the Russian claims could not be independently verified.
Russia-appointed head Denis Pushilin said that the area had been hit by 155mm caliber and 152mm caliber artillery, and that the shells had been fired from the direction of Kurakhove and Krasnohorivka to the west. He also confirmed that emergency services continued to work at the scene.
Reuters news agency photographs and video taken at the scene showed crying people, some of whom said they had lost their relatives, and bodies lying on blood-soaked snow in the area.
Watch related report by Arash Arabasadi:
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the attack "a barbaric act of terrorism" committed by Ukraine, adding it was carried out "with the use of weapons supplied by the West."
Russia also condemned the attack as “a treacherous act against the civilian population,” saying, “These terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime clearly demonstrate its lack of political will towards achieving peace and the settlement of this conflict by diplomatic means.”
Russia and Ukraine have traded blame over intensified attacks on civilian populations over the past two months.
During its almost two-year invasion of Ukraine, Russian airstrikes and heavy shelling on the sovereign nation have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
The market strike was one of the deadliest on Russian-controlled Donetsk since Moscow attacked Ukraine in February 2022 and claims to have annexed the territory, a move condemned as illegal by most countries in the U.N. General Assembly.
Responding to media questions about the attack, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement that the secretary-general strongly condemns all attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including today’s shelling of the city of Donetsk in Ukraine.
"Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international humanitarian law, are unacceptable and must stop immediately,” the statement said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not speak of the attack in his nightly address but said that in a single day, Russia had shelled more than 100 cities, towns and villages in nine Ukrainian regions and that the attacks in the Donetsk region had been the “most brutal.”
He also said, “Russia must feel and remember forever that the aggressor loses the most from aggression.”
The Ukrainian leader added that Russia will be held accountable for all this terror. “If it hadn't been for Moscow's decisions to start this aggression and this terror, thousands and thousands of people would be alive today,” he said.
Drone attack, massive fire
Meanwhile, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer Novatek said on Sunday it had to suspend some operations at a huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal due to a fire started by what Ukrainian media said was a drone attack.
The giant Ust-Luga complex, located on the Gulf of Finland about 170 kilometers (110 miles) west of St. Petersburg, ships oil and gas products to international markets.
"The Ust-Luga oil terminal ... is an important facility for the enemy. Fuel is refined there, which, among other things, is also supplied to Russian troops," the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported citing unnamed sources. The news agency also said that according to unnamed sources, the fire was the result of a special operation carried out by Ukraine’s security services.
In a statement to Russian media outlet RBC, Novatek also said that the fire was the result of an “external influence.”
Yuri Zapalatsky, the head of Russia’s Kingisepp district where the port is based, said in a statement that there were no casualties, but that the area had been placed on high alert.
News outlet Fontanka reported that two drones had been detected flying toward St. Petersburg Sunday morning, but that they were redirected toward the Kingisepp district. The Associated Press could not independently verify the reports.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not report any drone activity in the Kingisepp area in its daily briefing. The ministry said that four Ukrainian drones had been downed in Russia’s Smolensk region, and that two more had been shot down in the Oryol and Tula regions.
Ground war stalemate
Russian forces also seized the village of Krokhmalne in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday.
Ukrainian forces confirmed the report but called the capture of the village a “temporary phenomenon.”
The fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces along the roughly 1,500-kilometer front line has remained static throughout the winter.
Some material for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
