Russia on Monday bombed an aid distribution centre and neighbouring shelter in southern Ukraine, killing at least 26 people, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the country’s emergency services said.
Emergency services said two members of a rescue crew and four police officers were among the dead in the village of Komyshuvakha, in south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region. Five people were being treated in hospital, including two rescue workers.
Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, said Russian forces initially dropped bombs on a school in the village that was used as a shelter and for distributing humanitarian assistance.
There were no classes at the school, he said, as the village, lying south-east of the region’s main city, also called Zaporizhzhia, was too close to the frontline.
“The Russians struck first just as people were arriving – a few aerial bombs,” he said. “Then there was a second strike – more air bombs, this time on the shelter. A vile terrorist strike.”
As night fell in Komyshuvakha, emergency responders used torches to search through the rubble of collapsed buildings, according to photos and video posted online by local officials. Regina Kharchenko, secretary of the Zaporizhzhia city council, said that 27 people were missing in the attack.
Efforts to rescue people Monday evening were hindered as Russian drones launched additional attacks in the area that had been bombed, according to Mykhailo Semikin, a military official in Zaporizhzhia.
Zelenskyy said the Russians could not have been unaware that residents remaining in Komyshuvakha gathered each week to pick up humanitarian packages from the site.
The attack, he said, had shown that Moscow was intent on killing people instead of building on the past week’s ceasefire in the embattled southern city of Oleshky, brokered by US first lady Melania Trump.
“Russians continue to demonstrate, time and again, their hatred of Ukraine and everything that exists here,” he said.
“If Russia genuinely wanted de-escalation, there was an opportunity following the situation in Oleshky to continue taking humanitarian steps. We proposed this. But Russia continues to kill people.”
The ceasefire last week enabled an evacuation of the Russian-occupied Oleshky.
It was the longest pause in fighting between the neighbours in the war, now in its fifth year, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.
The Kremlin said that no other similar missions were being planned “at the moment”.
US-led talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume next week, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Monday.
President Donald Trump has pushed for a settlement to the dragging war but there has been no breakthrough.
The talks – to be held 10 November and 11 in Abu Dhabi, Witkoff said – come as Kyiv and its European allies worry that Trump has increasingly sided with Moscow.
*With Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
