A restaurant in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, after a Russian missile strike hit it on June 27.GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images
A Russian missile attack that destroyed a popular restaurant and shopping complex in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, occurred shortly after Canadian volunteers had gathered in the restaurant Tuesday.
The volunteers were members of the Black Maple Company, an organization that raises money online and says on its website that it has people in Ukraine both delivering humanitarian assistance and “currently fighting on the battlefield.” Men in military uniforms were photographed in the restaurant just before the attack, and several foreigners, including a man wearing a U.S. flag on his helmet, were filmed treating the wounded afterward.
The images, which circulated widely on social media, were being used Wednesday by pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts to justify Russia striking the restaurant with two Iskander ballistic missiles. The accounts asserted that the shattered pizzeria was a legitimate target because of the presence of “Western mercenaries.”
Four children – including 14-year-old twin sisters and a 17-year-old girl – were among those killed in the strike. The seriously wounded included an infant who suffered a cut to the head from shrapnel, as well as Victoria Amelina, a 37-year-old novelist who spent part of her teenage years in Canada and was reportedly in critical condition Wednesday with brain injuries.
Sisters Anna and Yulia Aksenchenko would have turned 15 in September, Kramatorsk city council’s education department said in a Facebook post under a picture of the two girls smiling for the camera.Kramatorsk city council’
The Black Maple Company, in a message sent via its Instagram account, told The Globe and Mail that members of the group had indeed been in the RIA Lounge before the attack. “Yes it is true – everyone is safe – however we received the order to not give any info,” they wrote.
Yulia Skladana, a Ukrainian volunteer who travelled to Kramatorsk with members of the group, said the attempts to highlight the presence of foreigners in the pizzeria before it was attacked were “Russian propaganda.”
Indeed, on her Wednesday morning program on the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya-1 channel, host Olga Skabeyeva said the missiles that hit Kramatorsk “were aimed at NATO instructors and the strike’s objective was achieved.”
Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that Russia’s military “does not strike at civilian infrastructure,” only “objects that are connected with military infrastructure in one way or another.”
Rescue workers and firefighters on June 28, 2023, at the site of a Russian missile strike on a popular restaurant in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.MAURICIO LIMA/The New York Times News Service
The RIA Lounge was among the few operating restaurants in Kramatorsk – a Ukrainian-controlled city close to the front line in the southeastern Donetsk region – and was, as a result, a popular gathering spot for journalists and emergency workers, as well as soldiers taking a break from the fighting.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said Wednesday that it had arrested a suspected Russian agent in Kramatorsk who allegedly made a video of the scene inside the restaurant, as well as the cars in the parking lot, and sent the file to Russian military intelligence ahead of the attack. The suspect was described as a Kramatorsk resident who worked for a local gas company.
Russian forces have repeatedly attacked civilian buildings over the course of their 16-month-old invasion of Ukraine, and Tuesday’s strike came on the anniversary of a missile attack on a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk that killed 21 people. Sixty-three people were killed in a separate missile strike on Kramatorsk’s crowded railway station in April, 2022.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have criticized Russia for targeting urban areas, in violation of international law, while also calling on Ukraine to stop basing its troops and weapons systems among the civilian populations they are defending.
Ms. Amelina was a finalist for the European Union Prize for Literature in 2019 for Dom’s Dream Kingdom, her second book. When Russia invaded Ukraine, she switched her focus to researching war crimes.
With reporting from Anton Skyba in Ukraine.