STAROBILSK – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered his military to prepare options to retaliate against Ukraine after he accused Kyiv of carrying out a deadly drone attack on a student dorm that he said had killed six and wounded dozens of young people with 15 still unaccounted for. Putin said the attack had struck the dorm in Starobilsk in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. He said Kyiv’s military must have known what it was targeting.
“There are 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 strike was not accidental; it came in three waves, with 16 drones targeting the same location,” Putin told officials.
The Russian military had been ordered to draw up options for Moscow to retaliate, he added.
Reuters was not able to independently verify what happened and there was no comment on Friday from Ukraine, which wants to recapture Luhansk, one of four eastern regions that Moscow unilaterally claimed as its own in 2022 in what Kyiv denounced as an illegal land grab.
Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians in the war.
Yana Lantratova, Russia’s human rights commissioner, said that 86 teenagers aged 14 to 18 had been asleep inside the hostel belonging to Luhansk Pedagogical University’s Starobilsk college when Ukrainian drones had attacked it during the night.
Leonid Pasechnik, the top Russian-installed official in Luhansk, said two people had been pulled from the rubble and Maria Lvova-Belova, presidential commissioner for children’s rights, said up to 18 children could still be trapped.
Some children being treated in hospital were reported to be in a serious condition, Lvova-Belova said.
KREMLIN CALLS ATTACK ‘MONSTROUS’
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for those responsible to be punished.
“This is a monstrous crime. An attack on an educational institution where children and young people are present,” he told reporters.
Moscow said the U.N. Security Council would hold an emergency session in New York later on Friday to discuss the incident.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the Ukrainian strike had pulverised the top three of the hostel’s five floors.
“We call on international organisations, national governments and the global community to give an honest assessment … and to strongly condemn the bloody terrorist attack,” it said in a statement.
Photographs and video released by the Russian authorities showed rescue workers stretchering one man out of the rubble, severely damaged buildings – one of which appeared to have partially collapsed – and fires still burning.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week promised retribution after laying red roses at the rubble of a Kyiv apartment building where a Russian missile strike had killed 24 people, including three children.
(Reporting by Reuters; Additional reporting by Maxim Rodionov and Anton KolodyazhnyyWriting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Nia Williams)
