A Russian missile killed four people traveling in a car in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, the head of the regional military administration, Oleg Siniegubov, announced.
“The inhabitants [russos] bombed Guryev Kozachok village in Bogodukhiv district. A Russian anti-tank guided missile hit a civilian vehicle on its way to the village,” Siniegubov said.
“According to preliminary data, four people were in the car, who died on the spot,” he said in a post on the Telegram social network, quoted by the Spanish agency EFE.
Siniegubov released two photos of what he said the vehicle had been attacked.
“This is yet another act of terror by the Russians against the civilian population,” he denounced.
Since the start of the war on February 24, 2022, Kiev has accused Russia of attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, including residential buildings, but Moscow has always responded that it targets military targets only.
The number of civilian and military casualties in Russia’s war against Ukraine is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have admitted that the number will be high.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed the deaths of 8,983 civilians since the start of the war to June 4, and more than 15,400 wounded.
The UN agency has warned that “actual numbers are significantly higher” given the delay in receiving information and confirming data from places of heavy fighting.
This is the case in Mariupol (Donetsk region), Lysychansk, Popasna and Sievierodonetsk (Lugansk region), “where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties,” the OHCHR office said in its most recent bulletin on the war.
Announcing the invasion, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said Moscow intended to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine, which had split from Russia with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in 1991.
Putin has also accused the Kiev regime of an alleged genocide of Russian speakers in Ukraine, particularly in Donbass, the region formed by the self-declared people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The Russian leader recognized the independence of the two Ukrainian territories before launching the military invasion, which he also justified with a request for help from separatist forces in Donbass.
In September, Russia annexed Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporijia, after doing the same with Crimea in 2014, when the separatist war in Donbass began, with support from Moscow.
Kyiv and the wider international community do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the five Ukrainian regions.
To counter Russian troops, Ukraine relies on the supply of military equipment by its Western allies.
The West has also imposed economic sanctions on Russian interests to try to reduce Moscow’s ability to finance the war effort.
Source: DN
