Russian Strike on Ukraine Cafe Kills 51, One of the War’s Worst Civilian Attacks

A Russian missile hit a village cafe where local residents had gathered for a wake in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, killing 51 people, officials said Thursday.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that residents of the small village of Hroza were holding a memorial service in the cafe when it was struck by Russian fire.

"From every family, from every household, there were people present at this commemoration," Klymenko told Ukrainain TV.

"This is a terrible tragedy."

"According to preliminary findings, the venue was hit by an Iskander," Klymenko, said, referring to the Russian 9K720 Iskander short-range ballistic missile, which travels at more than six times the speed of sound.

Seven people were also in hospital after the attack, which appeared to be the most devastating Russian strike on a residential area in weeks.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, and Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces shelled the village of 330 people in the Kharkiv region around 1:15 p.m.

A 6-year-old boy was among the dead, Syniehubov said, and one child was wounded.

Zelenskyy, at a summit of around 50 European leaders in Spain, called the blast “a demonstrably brutal Russian crime – a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely deliberate act of terrorism.”

The Ukrainian president posted a graphic image showing six bodies, some caked in cement dust, laid out on the side of a road in Kharkiv’s Kupiansk district.

The toll would mark one of the highest in any single attack in the 19-month-long war.