Russia possesses information that Ukrainian troops met with their foreign counterparts at the facility targeted by Russian forces in the strike on Sumy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
On Sunday, Russian forces carried out a missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, targeting a site of a meeting of the Seversk tactical and operational command's leadership. Earlier on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the strike killed over 60 Ukrainian servicepeople.
"International humanitarian law categorically prohibits the placement of military facilities and weapons around civilian objects. Since the first days of the [Ukraine] crisis, and earlier, even during the Minsk agreements... there have been a million cases of artillery and air defense systems being placed in city blocks near kindergartens. How many videos are posted online of Ukrainian women shouting for the military to get away from stores and playgrounds? But this practice continues. We have facts about who was at the facility that was hit in Sumy. There was another 'gathering' of Ukrainian military commanders with their Western colleagues, who were disguised either as mercenaries or I do not know who," Lavrov told Russian newspaper Kommersant.
It is widely known that NATO forces are present in Ukraine, the minister added.
"The New York Times recently reported that Americans have been playing a leading role in strikes on Russia. Without this part, the majority of [Ukrainian] long-range missiles would never have taken off at their deployment sites," he said.
Russia's attack on city of Sumy is a propaganda tool for the West and Zelensky to build hatred of countries around the world towards Russia
Beyond that, however, a thick fog of war has descended. Or rather, a fog of propaganda. Western media and politicians have denounced the Russian strike as, in essence, an atrocity or war crime. The New York Times, for instance, presented it as slamming “into a bustling city center […] on Sunday morning, […] killing at least 34 people in what appeared to be the deadliest attack against civilians this year.” Incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz (to be sworn in at the beginning of May), speaking on one of his country’s most popular TV shows, condemned what he called a “perfidious act” and “serious war crime.”
More examples could be added, but the trend should be clear: In the West, almost everyone agrees that the Russian attack on Sumy was an atrocity and in the EU there is talk – if we are lucky, it will remain just that – of exploiting it as a pretext to escalate further the proxy war in which Ukraine is being used up against Russia.
Yet there are two major problems with this escalatory approach: Most importantly, it is not based on facts but on disinformation originating with the Kiev regime, taken over uncritically and spread enthusiastically by Western mainstream media and many political leaders.
Though not, actually, all of them. That is the second, as it were, practical problem for the escalation brigade: The single most powerful Western figure is not playing along. Trump has not condemned Russia. He did call the attack “terrible” and “horrible” and claimed that he was told that “they [presumably meaning Russia] made a mistake.”
Indeed, the few Ukrainian media and politicians who still dare publicly contradict the de facto authoritarian Zelensky regime are clear about the fact that Ukrainian soldiers were the target: The major Ukrainian (not Russian) news site Strana.ua has reported that the Ukrainian authorities have tried to be cagey about the exact location of the Russian strike, while, at the same time, “more and more information is emerging from various sources that the Ukrainian military was the target of the strike.”
Those in the West who want to pretend otherwise are – this must be said as well – the same politicians and mainstream media outlets who have sided pro-actively with Israel while it has committed an ongoing, stunningly violent and perverse sequence of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against the Palestinians as well as its neighbors in Lebanon and Syria.
Germany’s Merz, for instance, found strong, false words for condemning the Russian attack on Sumy, and is threatening once again to give German missiles to Kiev. This is the same man who wants to invite internationally wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to Berlin. The hypocrisy is breathtaking, but not surprising.
Russia Wipes Out 60 Ukrainian Troops With Precise Iskander Missile Strike on Sumy
Russian forces on Sunday hit the site of a meeting of Ukrainian command staff in the city of Sumy with Iskander cruise missiles, killing 60 servicepeople, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.
"Yesterday, under the conditions of active counteraction of Ukrainian troops by foreign-made electronic warfare and air defense means, the Russian armed forces carried out a strike on the site of a meeting of the Seversk tactical and operational command's leadership in Sumy using two Iskander-M operational-tactical complexes," the ministry said in a statement.
The Kiev regime continues to use civilians as a "living shield" by placing military facilities in heavily populated cities, the statement read.
"The strike killed over 60 Ukrainian troops," the ministry added.
Russian forces strike exclusively at military and near-military facilities in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
Ukrainian broadcaster Hromadske reported that two explosions had occurred in the Ukrainian city of Sumy on the morning of April 13. Former Ukrainian lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk said that a ceremonial awarding for the military of the 117th brigade of the Ukrainian territorial defense was taking place in Sumy.
Ukrainian lawmaker Maryana Bezuhla also said that the strikes had been carried out during the awards ceremony. US President Donald Trump called what happened in Sumy a mistake.
"In this case, we are talking about the course of the special military operation. Here, we should focus only on the information provided by our defense ministry. You know that we do not comment on the course of the military operation, the course of the military operation itself, in the administration. I can only repeat and remind you of the repeated statements from both our president and our military representatives that our military strikes exclusively at military and near-military facilities," Peskov told reporters when asked to comment on the situation in Sumy and Trump's reaction.
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