At least 17 people were killed and many more were wounded in a Russian attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka on Wednesday as US secretary of state Antony Blinken visited Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.
Footage circulated online by presidential officials showed people falling to the ground or running for cover after a huge explosion in front of them, seconds after some look up to the sky when they heard what sounded like a missile approaching.
President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack, saying a market, shops and a pharmacy had been struck in the industrial city close to the battlefield.
“This Russian evil must be defeated as soon as possible,” Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app.
“When someone in the world still attempts to deal with anything Russian, it means turning a blind eye to this reality. The audacity of evil. The brazenness of wickedness. Utter inhumanity.”
He later told a press conference in Kyiv that he believed it had been a deliberate attack on “a peaceful city”.
“This is one more terrorist attack by the Russian Federation. They deliberately hit the market,” he said.
Kostiantynivka, which had a population of about 70,000 before Russia’s invasion 18 months ago, is about 30 km from the devastated city of Bakhmut, where fighting has been heavy for months.
It is about 560 km from Kyiv, where Blinken was meeting Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders on a visit intended to show support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. Wednesday’s strike followed a series of Russian attacks on cities in eastern Ukraine in which civilian infrastructure has been hit, including a popular cafe, a hotel and shops.
It also followed air strikes several hours earlier on Wednesday on Kyiv and the southern region of Odesa. No casualties were reported in the capital but local officials said one person was killed in the Odesa region. Interior minister Ihor Klymenko said that in addition to the 16 killed in Kostiantynivka, at least 28 people were wounded.
Local prosecutors later put the number of wounded at 31 and said 20 shops, power lines, an administrative building and a residential building had been damaged.
Eight retail facilities were burned to the ground and cars were destroyed, they said.
Images circulated on Telegram showed rescue workers sifting through the rubble and carrying out bodies in black sacks.
Russia did not immediately comment on the attack and has denied deliberately targeting civilians. The Kremlin had earlier on Wednesday said of Blinken’s visit that Moscow believed Washington planned to continue funding Ukraine’s military “to wage this war to the last Ukrainian”.
Associated Press journalists at the site of the attack in Kostiantynivka saw covered bodies on the ground and emergency workers extinguishing fires at market stalls, with blackened and mangled cars nearby.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at least 17 people were killed. At least 28 were wounded, according to internal minister Ihor Klymenko.
Emergency service workers extinguished the fire that damaged about 30 pavilions at the outdoor market, Klymenko said. Crews searched the rubble for any trapped civilians.
Twenty shops, power lines, administrative building and the floor of an apartment building were damaged, according to the prosecutor general’s office.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that US assistance to Ukraine “can’t influence the course of the special military operation” — Moscow’s euphemism for the war.
Overnight, Russia fired cruise missiles at Kyiv in its first aerial attack on the capital since August 30, according to Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv’s regional military administration.
