At least 51 people have been killed and 219 wounded in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, president Volodymyr Zelensky has said, in one of the deadliest Russian missile attacks of Vladimir Putin’s war.
The Ukrainian president said preliminary information suggested two Russian cruise missiles had struck an educational facility and nearby hospital in Poltava on Tuesday, killing a confirmed 47 people and injuring many more left beneath the rubble.
Later on Tuesday afternoon, the office for the prosecutor general of Ukraine said 51 people had been killed, while the regional governor Philip Pronin said 219 had been injured.
“The Russian scum will surely pay for this strike,” he wrote on the Telegram messenger app. “We continue to urge everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror: Ukraine needs air defence systems and missiles now, not sitting in storage.”
Reiterating calls for Western allies to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long range weapons inside Russia, Zelensky added: “Long-range strikes that can protect us from Russian terror are needed now, not later. Every day of delay, unfortunately, means more lost lives.”
One of the buildings of the Military Institute of Communications was partially destroyed, Mr Zelensky said, while Ukraine’s state emergency service said it had already received hundreds of claims about damaged properties after the shockwave smashed windows and damaged the exteriors of nearby high-rise buildings.
Condemning the “barbaric” attack, Ukraine’s defence ministry suggested that the time interval between air raid sirens sounding and the missiles hitting had been so short that people were caught up in the attack as they made their way to bomb shelters.
They added that 25 people were rescued from the building, 11 of whom were pulled from under the rubble, though efforts were reportedly delayed in the immediate aftermath of the strike by constant air raid alerts.
As rescuers sought to save those still buried beneath the rubble, Mr Pronin urged residents to donate blood to help aid survivors, as he announced three days of mourning and vowed that Russia “must answer for all crimes against humanity”.
Ukraine‘s land forces later confirmed that service personnel were killed in the Russian missile strike on a military institute in Poltava.
They said in a statement on Telegram that an investigation was underway to establish whether enough was done to protect personnel in the educational facility hit by the missile.
Some Ukrainian lawmakers and military personnel questioned why such a large group was congregated in the area given Russia’s history of targeting crowded facilities.
“This isn’t the first time Russia has targeted crowded facilities,” wrote a former Ukrainian officer who runs the analytical group Frontelligence Insight. “It seems many generals still haven’t learned some basic lessons, even in the third year of the war.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers, meanwhile, some with millions of followers, celebrated the attack as a military success. They claimed the casualties were as high as 700, without providing evidence, and referred to the victims as soldiers.
The attack came as Mongolia failed to arrest Putin when the Russian president visited the country on Tuesday, despite it being a member of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Rome Statute.
Mr Putin is facing an international arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, meaning Mongolia is legally obliged to detain the Russian president and transport him to The Hague, Netherlands, where the ICC is headquartered.
But Putin received a red-carpet welcome upon arrival. In the main square in Ulaanbaatar, the capital, the Russian leader was treated to an honour guard dressed in vivid red and blue uniforms styled on those of the personal guard of 13th century ruler Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire.
A throng of people watched from behind temporary barriers as Putin and Mongolian president Khurelsukh Ukhnaa walked up the red-carpeted steps of the Government Palace and bowed toward a statue of Khan before entering the building for their meetings.
A small group of protesters who tried to unfurl a Ukrainian flag before the ceremony were taken away by police. Five others who gathered a few blocks west of the square held up an anti-Putin banner and Ukrainian flag but disbanded after hearing about the arrests.
The trip is Putin’s first to a member nation of the ICC since it issued the warrant in March 2023. The Russian leader had been due to visit South Africa, another signatory of the ICC, last August, but after significant international and domestic protest inside the African nation, Putin eventually cancelled his trip.
Ahead of his visit, Ukraine urged Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant.
The warrant put the Mongolian government in a difficult position. After decades under communism with close ties to the Soviet Union, it transitioned to democracy in the 1990s and built relations with the United States, Japan and other new partners.
But the landlocked country remains economically dependent on its two much larger and more powerful neighbours, Russia and China.
The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Member countries are required to detain suspects if a warrant has been issued, but Mongolia needs to maintain its ties with Russia and the court lacks a mechanism to enforce its warrants.