A Ukrainian flag in the city of Kherson, in a Nov. 13, 2022, file photo.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
An apparent Russian artillery strike hit a market in the southern Ukraine city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing at least seven people and wounding three others, authorities said, on a morning when Ukrainians across the country were observing a minute’s silence for their military and war dead.
The strike happened as shoppers made their way between stalls at the city centre market, regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
He published a video showing the blurred corpses of people in civilian clothes lying near a stall with tomatoes and other vegetables.
Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office said the strike was “most likely” carried out by Russian artillery and hit close to a public transport stop.
The city has not recently been a hot spot in the war, now deep into its third year, as the fiercest battles have been taking place in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region where Russia’s army is pushing hard to take ground ahead of the winter.
Ukrainian forces have struck back with an incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region, but the government is waiting to hear what further Western military and financial support it can count on.
The Kherson region was one of four, also including Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, that Moscow illegally annexed in September, 2022, and is partly occupying. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw completely from those regions. Ukraine refuses.
Kherson fell into Russian hands after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February, 2022. A Ukrainian counteroffensive recaptured western areas of the Kherson region, including the regional capital of the same name, nine months later.
The market attack came on the same morning as Ukraine celebrated Defenders’ Day, an annual public holiday that honours the country’s armed forces, veterans and war dead.
Across Ukraine, traffic stopped and people on sidewalks came to a halt at 9 a.m. to commemorate those defending Ukraine and those who have sacrificed their lives for the country.
The holiday was established in 2014 and first celebrated in 2015, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and occupation of parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
Though no official or reliable statistics are available, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are believed to have died fighting Russia over the past 10 years.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky used the occasion to appeal for further support from his country’s Western partners, after his visit last week to the United States.
“The daily Russian terror, the daily attempts to destroy life – all this can be stopped,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on Telegram after the strike on Kherson, adding that “Ukrainian strength and the determination of our partners must be greater than Putin’s desire to spread terror.”
In an address to the military, Mr. Zelensky thanked troops for their sacrifices.
“You dedicate yourselves so that Ukraine is not surrendered. Both those who were born warriors and those who became warriors. You changed your own lives so that our freedom remains unchanged,” Mr. Zelensky said.
“We see your courage. We see it every day and every night. On weekdays and weekends. In heat and frost. Always. Every minute. A minute whose value you know better than anyone else. A minute that can change absolutely everything,” he said.