The Japan Times - Ukrainians mourn Sumy strike victims as Russia denies targeting civilians

A day after two missiles killed at least 35 people, people laid flowers beside a destroyed university building as workers dug through the rubble.

"We used to walk here all the time," said Igor Koloshchuk, stood by the makeshift memorial with his wife Tetyana.

"We came to pay our respects," Tetyana said, adding she felt "shock, incomprehension, and probably hatred."

Authorities said the dead included two boys aged 11 and 17. But Russia said its missiles hit a meeting of army commanders, accusing Ukraine of using civilians as a "human shield".

Russia's attack drew international condemnation.

The US president -- who is pushing for a ceasefire -- called it a "horrible thing" and a "mistake" by Russia's President Vladimir Putin, but also targeted Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump -- who had a blazing White House row with Zelensky six weeks ago -- said the Ukrainian leader shared the blame for "millions of people dead" with Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and former US president Joe Biden.

"Let's say Putin number one, but let's say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky," Trump said during a meeting with El Salvador's president.

Zelensky was "always looking to purchase missiles", Trump said.

"When you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war," Trump said. "You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size, and then hope that people give you some missiles."

-- Russia rejects blame --

Commenting on the Sumy strike for the first time, Russia's defence ministry said its army launched two ballistic Iskander-M missiles at "the place of a meeting of command staff", claiming to have killed 60 Ukrainian soldiers.

The Kremlin denied targeting civilians or making any kind of "mistake".

"Our army hits only military and military-related targets," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The defence ministry appeared to concede there were civilian casualties, but blamed Ukraine.

"The Kyiv regime continues to use the Ukrainian population as a human shield, placing military facilities and holding events with the participation of soldiers in the centre of a densely populated city," the ministry said.

Russia has made similar accusations during the war.

Conservative independent estimates say however that thousands of civilians have died as Russian missiles have hit Ukrainian apartment blocks, hospitals, schools, train stations and other civilian areas.

"Only completely deranged scum can do something like this," Zelensky said of the Sumy strikes Sunday.

- 'Mountains of corpses' -

Sumy's residents recalled the horror of the strikes.

"It was chaos. There were mountains of corpses," recalled Artem Selianyn, a combat medic, who ran from his home to help, despite his family's flat being severely damaged in the attack.

The 47-year-old said one of the first victims he treated was a young woman working at a mobile coffee shop who was bleeding from an artery after her leg was hit by shrapnel.

"My shoes were covered in blood. I haven't cleaned them yet, it's the blood of the wounded," he said.

Kyiv said the attacks showed that Russia had no intention of halting its invasion, after Putin last month rejected a US call for a ceasefire.

Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Putin in Saint Petersburg on Friday that the Kremlin on Monday called "extremely helpful and very effective".

Ukraine's European allies strongly condemned the Russian attack however.

France's foreign ministry said the attack -- along with another this month that killed nine children and nine adults in Kryvyi Rig -- constituted "war crimes".

Germany's chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz also described the attack as "a serious war crime".

- 'Further escalation' -

The Kremlin criticised Merz for saying he was open to supplying Ukraine with Taurus missiles.

"He is agitating on the side of toughening his position and in favour of various steps that can -- and will -- inevitably lead to a further escalation of the Ukraine situation," Peskov said.

While Trump again criticised Zelensky, a senior official in Kyiv told AFP that Ukraine-US talks in Washington last week on a proposed mineral deal had gone "constructively".

Separate Russian strikes Monday on the northeastern region of Kharkiv killed four elderly residents, officials said. Russia said Ukrainian drone strikes on border villages in the Kursk region killed three people.

M.Fujitav--JT