A burning car in the immediate aftermath of a missile strike on Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, 4 April 2025. Photo: Telegram / Zelensky
Combined Russian missile and drone strikes on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih overnight have killed at least 20 people, including 9 children, according to the regional authorities.
Dnipropetrovsk region Governor Serhiy Lysak announced that a missile strike targeting multiple residential and civic buildings killed 18 people on Friday evening. Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s Defence Council, said on Saturday that over 70 people had been injured in the attack.
Another person was killed and seven more were injured in a subsequent drone strike on the city in the early hours of Saturday, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.
Russia’s Defence Ministry has said that the missile strike had specifically targeted “a meeting between unit commanders and Western instructors” in a restaurant in the city, and that it had left up to 85 servicemen dead.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) responded by calling Russia’s comments a “high precision” lie, adding that, “With yet another violation of international humanitarian law, the insidious enemy has demonstrated that it does not seek peace, but instead aims to continue its war of aggression against Ukraine and all Ukrainians.”
The Iskander-M ballistic missile use to attack the city had been equipped with a cluster warhead, “designed to hit a larger area and a larger number of people”, the AFU added, before reminding the Russian military that the “war crimes committed have no statute of limitations”.
“Many people are injured. Buildings have been damaged. The missile struck an area near residential buildings: hitting a playground and regular streets,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a Kryvyi Rih native himself, said after the attack.
Calling on the international community to “force Russia to abandon its terror and war”, Zelensky said that people capable of such things were “nothing but inhuman scumbags”, and that he had “no decent words to describe these Russian bastards”.
On Friday afternoon, Zelensky met with UK and French military top brass in Kyiv to discuss the potential stationing of foreign peacekeepers in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire deal with Russia being reached. Both countries’ governments have accused Russia of deliberately stalling efforts to end the war in recent weeks.
