Russian missile attack on city center kills 34

KYIV, Ukraine — Two Russian ballistic missiles slammed into a bustling city center in northeastern Ukraine on Sunday morning, officials said, killing at least 34 people in what appeared to be the deadliest attack against civilians this year.

The midmorning strike on the city of Sumy was the latest in a string of intensifying Russian attacks on urban centers in Ukraine that have inflicted heavy civilian casualties despite the Trump administration’s push for a ceasefire.

Officials said the city center was crowded with civilians out enjoying Palm Sunday, a Christian celebration popular in Ukraine, when the missiles hit. Lively streets were turned into scenes of carnage: Video of the aftermath showed mangled and bloodied bodies laying motionless, burning cars and debris covering the road as screams and sirens wailed in the background.

Two children were among the dead and at least 117 people were wounded, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

“People were harmed right in the middle of the street — in cars, on public transport, in their homes,” the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said on social media.

Volodymyr Boiko, a 69-year-old Sumy resident, was riding in the back of a crowded bus when one of the missiles hit. He survived with cuts to his face, but said that those seated toward the front were not as lucky and took the full force of the blast. “It was just bodies, stacked on top of each other,” Boiko said.

He compared the scene outside the bus to a “horror movie,” adding that “it was the first time in my life I saw people that mutilated.”

The strikes came just over a week after a Russian missile hit near a playground in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, killing 19 people, including nine children. In that attack and in the one Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials, Russia used ballistic missiles, which travel at high speeds, making them very difficult to shoot down.

Overall, civilian deaths have increased since U.S.-mediated ceasefire talks began in March. The United Nations said last week that 164 civilians were killed in Ukraine last month, a 50% increase from February and 70% more than the same period a year earlier.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine — who has accused Russia of using the ceasefire talks to stall for time — said the attack on Sumy showed that Moscow had no real interest in a ceasefire despite the Trump administration’s efforts to broker one.

“A strong reaction from the world is needed. From the United States, from Europe, from everyone in the world who wants this war and the killings to end,” Zelenskyy said in a message posted on Telegram. “Russia seeks exactly this kind of terror and is dragging out the war.”

Both Russia and Ukraine have pledged to halt attacks on energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea, but a deal has yet to come into effect. Russia has also rejected a full, unconditional 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine had accepted at the urging of the United States.

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