‘Little suns in the classroom’: Ukrainian city mourns children killed by Russian missile

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine — Anger and outrage gripped the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday as it held funerals for some of the 20 people, including nine children, killed by a Russian missile that tore through apartment buildings and blasted a playground.

More than 70 were injured in the attack last Friday evening on Kryvyi Rih. The children were playing on swings and in a sandbox in a tree-lined park at the time. Bodies were strewn across the grass.

“We are not asking for pity,” Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, wrote on Telegram as Kryvyi Rih mourned. “We demand the world’s outrage.”

The U.N. Human Rights Office in Ukraine said it was the deadliest single verified strike harming children since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It was also one of the deadliest attacks so far this year.

Ukraine has consented to a ceasefire proposed weeks ago by Washington. But Russia is still negotiating with the United States its terms for accepting a truce in the more than three-year war.

U.S. President Donald Trump has voiced frustration at the continued fighting, and Ukrainian officials want him to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop. Trump vowed during his election campaign last year to bring a swift end to the war.

“We’re talking to Russia. We’d like them to stop,” Trump told reporters Sunday. “I don’t like the bombing.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reaffirmed Monday that Putin supports a ceasefire proposed by Trump but wants Russian conditions to be met.

“President Putin indeed backs the ceasefire idea, but it’s necessary to first answer quite a few questions,” Peskov said.

In Kryvyi Rih, teacher Iryna Kholod, 59, remembered Arina and Radyslav, both 7 years old and killed in Friday’s strike, as being “like little suns in the classroom.”

Radyslav, she said, was proud to be part of a school campaign collecting pet food for stray animals. “He held the bag like it was treasure. He wanted to help,” she told The Associated Press.

After Friday evening, “two desks in my classroom were empty forever,” Kholod said, adding that she still has unopened birthday gifts for them.

“How do I tell parents to return their textbooks? How do I teach without them?” she asked.

Russian missile and drone tactics continue to evolve, making it harder to shoot them down, Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, said on national television.

Russia’s Shahed drones have undergone significant upgrades, while Moscow is also modernizing its ballistic missiles, he said.

Only the U.S. Patriot missile defense system can help prevent attacks like the one in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy said late Sunday.

He said he had instructed his defense and foreign affairs ministers to “work bilaterally on air defense, especially with the United States, which has sufficient potential to help stop any terror.”

Ukraine will send a team to Washington this week to begin negotiations on a new draft of a deal that would give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s valuable mineral resources, Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko told The Associated Press.

Failure to conclude a mineral deal has hamstrung Ukrainian efforts to secure pledges of continuing U.S. military support.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense and the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, a think tank, say Russia’s battlefield progress on the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line has slowed since November. But on Saturday night, Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine in nearly a month.

Both sides are thought to be preparing for a renewed spring-summer military campaign.

In Kryvyi Rih on Monday, an air raid alert interrupted a planned memorial — a reminder of the continuing threat for civilians.

The frustration hit home for Nataliia Freylikh, the schoolteacher of 9-year-old Herman Tripolets, who was killed in last Friday’s attack.

“Even mourning him properly is impossible,” Freylikh said.

___

Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.