Russia Claims 25 People Killed Due to Ukrainian Attacks on Donetsk Region

Ukrainian military illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Latest)

JAKARTA - Russian-appointed Head of the Donetsk Region, Denis Pushilin, said 25 people were killed and 25 others were injured as a result of Ukraine's attack on the eastern region controlled by Moscow troops.

Pushilin said 18 injured people were being treated in the hospital and seven people were being treated as outpatients, as reported by Reuters, January 22 .

Photos and videos taken at the scene showed people crying, some of whom said they had lost relatives, and bodies lying in blood-stained snow near one of the city's markets.

Pushilin declared Monday a day of mourning for the Donetsk People's Republic, the name given to the region that Russia says it has annexed.

In three other incidents in the area, Pushilin said, a man born in 1979 was killed and another born in 1957 was injured as a result of the shooting and four other people were injured.

Meanwhile, Russian-appointed local mayor Alexie Kulemzin said Ukrainian troops bombarded busy areas where shops and markets were located. Pushilin said the city was shelled by Ukrainian artillery.

Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his evening video address addressed the attacks, but said in one day, Russia had shelled more than 100 cities, towns, and villages in nine regions of Ukraine, saying the attacks in the Donetsk region were "very severe."

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops in Tavria, or the southern zone, said in a Facebook post that soldiers under their command were not responsible. "Donetsk is Ukraine!" it said. “Russia must be held responsible for the loss of Ukrainian lives.”

In Moscow, Russia's Foreign Ministry called the attack a "barbaric act of terrorism" carried out by Ukraine "using weapons supplied by the West".

"The Russian side firmly condemns this dangerous attack on the civilian population," a ministry statement said.

The governor of the Ukrainian-controlled region, Vadym Filashkin, said Russian attacks killed at least two people in two locations west of the city of Donetsk on Sunday.

In Kurakhove, about 45 km (28 miles) from Donetsk, a shooting killed a 31-year-old man and wounded another person, while a 62-year-old man was killed and a 70-year-old man was wounded in Krasnohorivka between Donetsk and Kurakhove, he said.

"I call on everyone still living in Donetsk: evacuate!" Filashkin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

It is known that Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, has voiced its anger in the past when Ukrainian attacks have killed civilians in Donetsk and other regions. However, massive airstrikes and shelling carried out by Russia have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

Donetsk is one of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed at the end of 2022 in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the UN General Assembly. Russia itself does not fully control any of the four regions.