Russia puts toll from Ukrainian strike at 27

Moscow: Russian authorities said on Friday that the death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike they said struck a cafe in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine’s Kherson region rose to 27 people. Kyiv denied attacking civilian targets.

Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman of Russia’s main criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, said in a statement that a Ukrainian drone strike on a cafe and hotel in the village of Khorly, where at least 100 civilians were celebrating New Year’s Eve overnight into Thursday, killed 27 people, including two minors. A total of 31, including five minors, were hospitalised with injuries.

A criminal probe into the charges of carrying out an act of terrorism has been opened, Petrenko said.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff, Dmytro Lykhovii, denied attacking civilians. He told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that Ukrainian forces “adhere to the norms of international humanitarian law” and “carry out strikes exclusively against Russian military targets, facilities of the Russian fuel and energy sector, and other lawful targets.” Lykhovii said that the General Staff published an explicit list of targets that the Ukrainian army struck on the night of New Year’s Eve that did not include occupied parts of the Kherson region.

In Kyiv, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed the head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, as his new chief of staff on Friday, following the resignation of Andrii Yermak after a corruption scandal over a month ago. In a post on Telegram, Zelenskyy said Ukraine now needs to focus on security issues, the development of its defence and security forces, and the diplomatic track of negotiations. Agencies