SUMY, Ukraine — Russia said Monday that its missiles hit a meeting of Ukrainian army commanders in Sumy, accusing Ukraine of using civilians as a “human shield” after Kyiv said the attack Sunday killed at least 34 people in one of the deadliest strikes of the entire war.
US President Donald Trump — who is pushing for a ceasefire — called the attack a “horrible thing” and suggested Russia had “made a mistake”.
Commenting on the strike for the first time after more than 24 hours, Russia’s defence ministry said its army launched two ballistic Iskander-M missiles at “the place of a meeting of command staff”, claiming that it had killed 60 Ukrainian soldiers.
The Kremlin rejected that its army had targeted civilians or that there had been any kind of “mistake”.
“Our army hits only military and military-related targets,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the strike and Trump’s comments.
Russia’s defence ministry appeared to concede there were civilian casualties, but placed the blame on Ukraine.
“The Kyiv regime continues to use the Ukrainian population as a human shield, placing military facilities and holding events with the participation of soldiers in the centre of a densely populated city,” the ministry said.
Russia has made similar accusations since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine’s emergency services said the attack killed 34 people, including two children.
One witness told AFP she heard the two explosions.
“A lot of people were very badly injured. A lot of corpses,” she said, struggling to speak.
People ran for cover amid burning cars and the dead were seen covered in silver sheets at the scene, where rescuers worked through the rubble of a building near a destroyed trolleybus.
The strike on Sumy came less than 48 hours after Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Putin in Saint Petersburg.
The Kremlin on Monday called the meeting “extremely helpful and very effective”, without elaborating on the discussions.
Ukraine’s European allies meanwhile have condemned the Russian attack on Sumy.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled”, and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni called it a “cowardly” act by Russia.
France’s foreign ministry said Monday that the attack — along with one a week earlier that killed nine children and nine adults in Kryvyi Rig — constituted “war crimes”.
Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz on Sunday described the attack as “a serious war crime, deliberate and intended”.
‘Further escalation’
The Kremlin on Monday criticised Merz for saying he was open to supplying Ukraine with Taurus missiles.
“He is agitating on the side of toughening his position and in favour of various steps that can — and will — inevitably lead to a further escalation of the Ukraine situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“Unfortunately, European capitals are really not inclined to look for ways of reaching peace talks, they are rather inclined to further provoke the continuation of the war,” Peskov added.
Separate Russian strikes on the northeastern region of Kharkiv killed four elderly residents, local officials said Monday.
Moscow has stepped up its pressure on the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv this year, and Ukraine’s army leaders have warned of a fresh offensive in the area.
Russia has pushed Ukraine out of all but 50 square kilometres of its western Kursk region, which borders Ukraine’s Sumy region, according to an AFP analysis of Institute for the Study of War data.
Moscow’s army has also captured several border settlements and controls around 95 square kilometres in the Sumy region — up from virtually nothing at the start of 2025.
