7 killed in Russian strike on Ukraine’s Chernihiv

Stockholm, August 19

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy travelled to Sweden on Saturday, his first visit to the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, while at home a missile strike in the center of a northern city killed seven people and wounded scores of others.

The Swedish government said Zelenskyy will meet officials at Harpsund, the prime minister’s official summertime residence, about 120 kilometers west of Stockholm. He will also meet Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia at a palace in the area.

Sweden abandoned its longstanding policy of military nonalignment to support Ukraine with weapons and other aid in the war against Russia. The government says Sweden has provided 20 billion kronor (1.7 billion euros) in military support to Ukraine, including Archer artillery units, Leopard 2 tanks, CV-90 infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons, mine clearing equipment and ammunition. Sweden also applied for NATO membership but is still waiting to join the alliance.

As Zelenskyy arrived in Sweden, a Russian missile strike killed seven people and wounded 90 others in the city centre of Chernihiv, the regional capital of the northern Ukrainian province of the same name, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. A six-year-old girl was among the dead, while the wounded included 12 children.

Zelenskyy condemned the attack, which he said hit buildings including a theater and a university.

“This is what a neighborhood with a terrorist state is, this is what we unite the whole world against. A Russian missile hit right in the center of the city, in our Chernihiv,” he wrote on Telegram. “A square, the polytechnic university, a theater. An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss.” In Russia, President Vladimir Putin visited top military officials in the city of Rostov-on-Don near the Ukrainian border.

The Kremlin said Putin listened to reports from Valery Gerasimov, the commander in charge of Moscow’s operations in Ukraine, and other top military brass at the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District.