On Russian state TV a news bulletin shows images of a five-storey building reduced to rubble.
Teams of rescuers are sifting through debris.
On a severely damaged façade there’s a sign:
“Starobilsk Professional College.”
The town of Starobilsk is in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine: in the Luhansk region which Moscow claims to have annexed.
Russian officials accuse Ukraine of a carrying out a drone attack on the college dormitory. According to official figures, 21 people were killed and 42 wounded.
The Russian TV report shows а number of survivors in hospital. One of them is identified as 21-year-old Olga Kovaleva. She’d been trapped under the rubble, but later rescued.
Then a caption fills the screen:
“The people killed in the Starobilsk attack,” it says, listing the names of the dead students and their dates of birth.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called what happened a “terrorist strike.” He insisted there had been “no military facilities, intelligence service facilities or related services in the vicinity.”
“Therefore, there is absolutely no basis for claiming that the munitions struck the building as a result of our air defence or electronic warfare systems,” the Kremlin leader said.
In a statement the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said it did carry out an attack near Starobilsk on the night of 21-22 May but maintains that it struck a Russian military unit.
Amid claim and counterclaim Russia on Friday had requested an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council.
“Under international humanitarian law, this constitutes a war crime,” said Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenyza. He held up photographs of the destroyed college.
“If we were to apply the same logic behind Russia’s call for today’s meeting, we would need twice-daily emergency Security Council meetings — including on the weekends — to only scratch the surface of the terror, death and destruction inflicted across Ukraine by Russia,” commented the representative from Denmark.
On Friday Putin ordered Russia’s defence ministry to propose a response to the attack.
Hawkish pro-Kremlin commentators are urging the Kremlin to not limit retaliation to Ukraine.
“We need to start punishing Europe for things like this, including with strikes,” said Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, to state-run Vesti. “Symbolic [strikes] to start with. Then, perhaps, less symbolic ones.”
Late on Saturday officials announced that emergency teams had completed the search and rescue operation.
