Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday denounced a Russian attack on a museum in the northeastern city of Kupyansk, which he considered a new “war crime” that killed at least one person and wounded ten.
“Up to this point, we have been informed of the death of an employee of the museum and the injury of ten people,” Zelensky said on Telegram, criticizing the Russians who “kill Ukrainians in barbaric ways.”
“There are still people under the rubble,” he added.
“All the perpetrators of war crimes will be prosecuted, and it will happen without mercy,” he added.
“A local history museum was bombed” in the city center of Kobyansk, near the front line in northeastern Ukraine, Yelensky said.
In a short video clip Zelenskiy posted on Telegram, a destroyed building is seen with shattered windows and debris on the ground.
“The terrorist state is doing everything it can to destroy us completely,” the Ukrainian president said, adding, “We must respond and we will.”
Andriy Yermak, director of the Ukrainian presidential office, indicated on Telegram that the Russian attack was carried out using a Soviet-made S-300 missile.
Before the war, more than 25,000 people lived in the city of Kupyansk, about 100 kilometers from Kharkiv. Russian forces captured Kobyansk in the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Ukrainian forces recaptured it in September after a lightning counterattack.
But the Moscow forces, which received reinforcements with the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists in Russia, returned to the attack at the beginning of this year in this region, which raised the fear of the population.
In early March, Ukraine ordered the evacuation of vulnerable residents of the city of Kobyansk and its adjoining areas in the north-east of the country, as fears mounted that Russia would recapture the city.