Four people, including a judge on Ukraine’s Supreme Court, were killed and nine more were injured in two Russian airstrikes on villages in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Saturday, local officials said.
The Kharkiv regional Prosecutor’s Office said that a 61-year-old Supreme Court judge had been killed in what it described as a “cynical attack” when a Russian drone struck his car as he was delivering humanitarian aid to residents in the border village of Kozacha Lopan at around 1pm local time on Saturday afternoon. Three women who were also in the vehicle were hospitalised as a result of their injuries, it added.
Ukraine’s Supreme Court later identified the judge as Leonid Loboyko, whom it described as a “kind, wise, and compassionate person” who had worked in the country’s Criminal Cassation Court.
Three more men were killed and six people were injured in a separate strike on the nearby village of Slatyne several hours later, the Prosecutor’s Office said, with a shop, houses, and an educational institution all reportedly damaged by guided aerial bombs in the attack.
The Prosecutor’s Office announced it had opened investigations into both attacks for premeditated murder and the violation of the laws and customs of war, and that law enforcement agencies were taking “all possible and appropriate measures to document the war crimes committed by Russian forces”.
The attacks on the Kharkiv region came just hours after a Russian drone strike on a hospital in the capital of Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region killed 10 people and injured 22 more on Saturday morning, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Russia of “waging war on hospitals, civilian objects and people’s lives” and saying the attack proved that “only strength can force Russia into peace”.