'An ordinary Saturday turned into a day of pain': 5 killed, 37 injured in Russian missile strike on Ukraine's Chernihiv

At least five people died and 37 others were left severely injured after a Russian missile struck in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, the country’s interior ministry confirmed on Saturday.

The victims were on their way to a church in the central square to celebrate a religious holiday when the strike took place, the ministry said, adding that 11 of the wounded were children.

“A Russian missile hit right in the centre of the city, in our Chernihiv. A square, the polytechnic university, a theatre,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was on a working visit to Sweden, posted on Telegram.

“An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss,” he added.

He also posted a video of the destruction on X (formerly known as Twitter).

This is what it means to live next to a terrorist state. This is what we are uniting the entire world against.

Today, a Russian missile hit the heart of Chernihiv. A square, a university, and a theater. Russia turned an ordinary Saturday into a day of pain and loss. There are… pic.twitter.com/AMgXCVfR7h

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 19, 2023

A short video accompanying Zelenskyy’s post showed debris scattered across a square in front of the regional drama theatre, where parked cars were heavily damaged. One body could also be briefly seen in the video slouched inside a car.

Russia has attacked Ukrainian cities far from the front line with missiles and drones as part of its full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

With inputs from Reuters