A Russian glide bomb struck a village in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing at least 21 people and wounding about two dozen others as they waited outside a post office to collect pensions, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the blast hit the village of Yarova in Donetsk region and called the attack “frankly brutal,” urging the international community to increase economic pressure on Russia. Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said 21 people were killed and 21 wounded, describing the strike as "pure terrorism." Emergency responders were at the scene, authorities said.
The attack underscores an intensification of Russian aerial bombardment of Ukrainian territory as diplomacy has stalled. U.S. and European officials met at the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday evening to consider additional economic measures, including sanctions and tariffs on Russian oil purchases, a person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press. The talks were expected to continue Tuesday.
Glide bombs are retrofitted Soviet-era weapons that Moscow has used repeatedly in eastern Ukraine. Some variants have been modified to carry warheads weighing as much as 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), far larger than the devices' original configurations when they first appeared in the conflict in 2022.
Yarova lies less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the front line. The settlement was occupied by Russian forces in 2022 and later retaken by Ukrainian forces during a counteroffensive later the same year. In many rural Ukrainian communities, pensions are delivered in cash at post offices on designated days, and elderly residents commonly stand in line to collect funds, making such gatherings vulnerable to attacks.
The United Nations says more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have died in the three-year war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukrainian officials and international monitors have repeatedly criticized Russia for strikes that have hit civilian infrastructure and gatherings.
Zelenskyy appealed directly to world leaders to respond more forcefully. "The world should not remain silent," he wrote on the messaging platform Telegram, calling for the United States, European countries and the G20 to take measures that would make Russia pay economically for the invasion and, he said, stop the flow of attacks that claim civilian lives.
The strike came days after Russia launched what Ukrainian authorities described as its largest aerial attack since the start of the war, targeting Kyiv with drones and missiles. Ukrainian air defenses and emergency services have been repeatedly tested by waves of strikes across multiple regions in recent months.
Local officials said responders were providing medical aid and evacuating the wounded to regional hospitals. Filashkin called on investigators to document the casualties and on international institutions to respond.
The killing of civilians in public places has drawn condemnation from Ukrainian officials and added urgency to Western deliberations about further punitive measures. The outcome of those deliberations may affect the economic tools available to governments weighing additional sanctions, restrictions on energy imports and other measures meant to increase the costs to Russia for continuing the war.
As investigators and relief teams worked in Yarova, Ukrainian authorities continued to seek diplomatic and economic responses while managing the immediate humanitarian and security consequences of the strike.