Russian strike on playground kills 14 in Zelensky’s hometown despite peace efforts

KYIV – Despite a partial ceasefire, a Russian ballistic missile struck near a playground in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown Friday evening, killing at least 14 people – including six children – and enraging officials across Ukraine, who again called on Russia to accept a total ceasefire.

“Russian strikes occur every day,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “People die every day. There is only one reason why this continues: Russia doesn’t want a ceasefire, and we see it. The whole world sees it. Each missile, every attack drone proves that Russia seeks only war.”

More than 50 other people were injured in the attack on Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian authorities said – a city still in mourning from an attack two days earlier – as air alert sirens simultaneously pierced cities across the country, warning of incoming threats.

Online, photos showed a grim scene of the wreckage: vegetation burned to charcoal; the husk of a vehicle aflame; bodies of the victims lying under foil sheets, palms upturned in the grass. A ribbon of white crime scene tape looped the playground, where children were playing on one of the first warm days of spring.

First lady Olena Zelenskyy, who is also from the town, added: “Children are again among those killed by Russia. … Children should be a hope, not a target.”

Doctors were “fighting for every life,” Gov. Serhiy Lysak said in a post on Telegram, as surgeries to save the wounded were underway. The youngest victim, suffering lacerations from shrapnel, was a 3-month-old boy.

The missile hit hours after the foreign ministers of France and Britain accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stalling over the United States’ proposal for a total 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine has agreed to. Though Russia and Ukraine have each made agreements with the U.S. to stop attacks on energy infrastructure, the Kremlin has not agreed to the more expansive proposal.

In recent weeks, Russia has repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure across Ukraine – incinerating a popular restaurant shaped like a boat in Dnipro, striking a residential area in Zaporizhzhia, hitting a block of apartments in Kyiv – even while repeatedly blaming Ukraine for hitting a gas metering station in the western Russian town of Sudzha, which the Kremlin says is evidence of Kyiv’s violation of the limited ceasefire. The Russian attacks have killed scores of people,

“Russia owes an answer to the United States that has worked very hard to come up with a mediation effort,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters during a NATO meeting in Brussels. His British counterpart, David Lammy, added: “Putin continues to obfuscate, continues to drag his feet. He could accept a ceasefire now.”

This latest attack, Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said, “shattered human lives.”

“Russia is a country that systematically destroys peaceful life,” he added. “It does not choose its targets by accident. It strikes civilians.”

The Ukrainian president detailed the carnage of the past 24 hours – including five dead from an attack in Kharkiv – and pleaded for the U.S. to put pressure on Russia so Moscow would feel “every lie, every strike, every day it takes human lives.”