Russian officials have said that a Ukrainian drone attack on Saturday hit a holiday camp in Kyrylivka, a resort area on the Sea of Azov in the Russian-occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, killing 12 people, including five children.
“As a result of this brutal attack, 19 civilians were injured, 12 of whom died. Two people, including a child, were rescued from the rubble,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-backed governor of Zaporizhzhia, wrote on Telegram.
Balitsky accused Ukraine of “disregarding all moral standards” and “deliberately killing civilians—both adults and children.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians, and also referenced an attack that hit a factory in the Russian city of Kirov, which killed six people. Ukrainian officials said the attack was carried out using a long-range Flamingo cruise missile and claimed the facility it hit was producing missiles.
“Zelensky, his associates, and Western sponsors should keep in mind: they will pay dearly for every crime they commit,” Zakharova said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
The US is known to support Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks inside Russia by providing intelligence, meaning the operations always risk an escalation between the US and NATO.
The Ukrainian attacks came as Russia continues to pound Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones. On Friday, a Russian ballistic missile attack killed at least ten people near a military industry event outside of Kyiv, an event Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said shouldn’t have happened.
“Of course, the cause of this attack is Russian missiles, nothing but Russian terror,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Friday. “However, we have said a thousand times that under these wartime conditions, with such an enemy, it is absolutely unacceptable to hold any weapons exhibitions with large crowds of people, especially near residential buildings.”
