Palm Sunday Attacks On Sumy And Al-Ahli
In yesterday's
week-in-review I had linked to a missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy:
Russia launched a missile attack on the center of Sumy. More than 30 people were killed -
Strana
Machine translation:
This morning, the Russians fired two ballistic missiles at the center of Sumy. 31 people were killed, including 2 children.
84 people were injured, including 10 children.
The Prosecutor General's Office reported that at about 10:15, the Russian military launched two missile strikes on the center of the city of Sumy. Rescue operations are continuing, the number of victims is being specified.
One of the pictures
Strana provided showed the destroyed congress center of the Sumy State University .
bigger
Shortly after the incident the Member of the Rada Mariana Bezuglaya accused the military command of staging a ceremony in the city despite it being less than 20 kilometer from the active fighting front (machine translation):
Mariana Bezuhla (Mariana Bezuhla) @marybezuhla -
9:32 UTC · Apr 13, 2025
Russia shelled the center of Sumy on Palm Sunday. Appeal to Syrsky and separately to the TrO commander: do not gather the military for awards, and even more so in civilian cities-again, the Russians had information about the cluster. And the polygons are still being plotted...
Don't build, don't do "reward and build" so that your scoop and you with it will be cursed!
SBU: another information leak.
No one has been punished for previous cases. For example, after the tragedy with the award ceremony in the 128th brigade, no one has yet been handed suspicion. Therefore, Brigade Commander Lysyuk is the godfather of General Zubanich...
...
Mr. President, is this OK for you? Keep silent and keep scoops??? They don't draw conclusions! They don't draw conclusions, Mr. President!
Mariana Bezuhla has some notoriety for having insider information from the Ukrainian military. She has for some time argued for the removal of the Ukrainian Commander in Chief General Syrsky.
She later
added:
Vinnytsia, Chernihiv, Poltava, Dnipro, Sumy. All cases are similar. In between, there are hundreds of other Russian cynical attacks directly on civilians, but there are cases where the enemy received information about the military in major cities. It is impossible not to draw conclusions! The enemy is trying to take every chance!
...
We cannot put up with the indifferent heads of some administrations who send out information about meetings in an open way, and then remain in their positions — as has happened several times before.
Her tweet included a propaganda picture of the 117th Territorial Brigade.
Bezuhla was not the only politician
to speak out:
MP Mariana Bezuglaya, former MP Ihor Mosiychuk and Mayor of Konotop Artem Semenikhin said that the missiles arrived at the award ceremony for the military of the 117th territorial Defense Brigade, which is fighting in Sumy region and just today marks the anniversary of its creation. Bezuglaya and Mosiychuk say that there may have been a leak of information when sending out invitations to the event.
Moreover, Mosiychuk said that civilians were also invited to the event. Including children.
"I hope that in Sumy they are already detaining the head of the Internal Affairs Service Artyukh and MP Ananchenko (MP from Sumy from the ruling Servant of the People party- Ed. ), who so wanted to make a splash at the festive awarding of soldiers of the 117th TrO brigade on the occasion of the seventh anniversary. Artyukh, Ananchenko promoted the award ceremony in Sumy and gathered there, in addition to the military, also civilians, in particular children! Scum and scum! " - wrote Mosiychuk.
At the same time, Konotop Mayor Artem Semenikhin called Governor Artyukh "scum and scarecrow" and called on him to "get down on his knees and apologize to people" before 18:00. He also said that he was on the spot at the time of the impact and "draped" from there, "knocking down children." He called on the governor and the head of the regional SBU to resign.
Today news appeared of
several high ranking
military casualties:
Colonel Yurii Yula, commander of the 27th Rocket Artillery Brigade named after Ataman Petro Kalnyshevskyi, was killed in a Russian missile attack on the city of Sumy on 13 April.
Source: Berdychiv City Council; Suspilne, a Ukrainian public broadcaster, with reference to Berdychiv District Military Administration; Ukrainska Pravda sources in the defence forces.
The 27th Rocket Artillery Brigade is the only Ukrainian unit that is officially
equipped with HIMARS, the U.S. missile system which is used to fire long range missiles into Russia. It is headquartered in Sumy. The U.S. military would regard its commander a 'high value target'.
Today the Russian Ministry of Defense
announced:
Yesterday, the Russian Armed Forces launched two Iskander-M operational-tactical missiles in conditions of heavy electronic warfare countermeasures and foreign-made air defence systems in action to hit the site in Sumy where commanding officers of the Seversk task force had a meeting. More than 60 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been eliminated.
The Kiev regime continues to use the Ukrainian population as a human shield by deploying military facilities and carrying out activities involving servicemen in the centre of the densely populated city.
The facts thus seem to be clear. There was a ceremony planned for the seventh anniversary of the founding of the 117th Territorial Brigade. This was to take place in the congress center of the Sumy State University. Medals were to be presented for the recent participation of the brigade in the attack on the Russian oblast of Kursk. Invitations to the commanders of neighboring units were sent out.
Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov
hinted that 'western' military official were also there:
We have facts about who was at the facility that was hit in Sumy - Lavrov
"There was another "meeting" of Ukrainian military leaders with their Western colleagues, who were either under the guise of mercenaries, or I don't know under the guise of who," the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized."
The Russian military got wind of the event and
destroyed the congress center (pics) with two Iskander missiles. There were military and civilian casualties. But under the rules of war the strike was on a legitimate target.
European politicians widely condemned the attack as having been on civilians. President Trump called the attack
a "mistake".
Neither the
New York Times nor the
Washington Post report of the military target of the Russian attack. Both emphasize that the attack took place on Palm Sunday.
NYT (
archived):
Two missiles hit the city center about 10:15 a.m., according to the regional prosecutor’s office. Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said the ballistic missiles struck when the streets were crowded with civilians out enjoying Palm Sunday, a Christian celebration popular in Ukraine. At least 83 people were injured, Mr. Klymenko added.
The
Post (
archived):
The attack on the city’s downtown area occurred on Palm Sunday, as families flocked to church to mark the beginning of Holy Week ahead of Easter. Volodymyr Artyukh, head of the Sumy regional military administration, said Russia launched two ballistic missiles at the city.
One hit “an ordinary city street” in Sumy, which sits just 18 miles from the Russian border, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
In another attack yesterday Israel destroyed one of the last hospitals in Gaza.
The
New York Times has only a
short video of the attack:
Israeli Strike Heavily Damages One of Gaza’s Last Major Hospitals
No one was killed in the attack on the Ahli Arab Hospital, but a child being treated for a head injury died from the rushed evacuation, according to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem, which oversees the medical center.
The
Washington Post report is
better (
archived):
The Israeli military bombed the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City early Sunday, medics there said, giving patients, doctors and displaced Palestinians sheltering on the grounds only 20 minutes to evacuate before it struck and destroyed key parts of the facility.
More than 200 people — 88 patients and 120 staff members — were at al-Ahli Hospital when its reception received a call from the Israeli military telling them to leave the building shortly before 2 a.m. local time, according to the facility’s medical director and an American orthopedic surgeon volunteering at the hospital.
The al-Ahli hospital is provided for and administered by Christian institutions. But neither paper thought it necessary to emphasize that the illegal attack on the obviously civilian target took place on Palm Sunday.
Only deep down its piece does the
Post insert a quote which mentions it:
“The Diocese of Jerusalem is appalled at the bombing of the hospital now for the fifth time since the beginning of the war in 2023 — and this time on the morning of Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week,” the Baptist Church in Jerusalem said.
The Russian attack on a legitimate military target is depicted as a war crime. That it took place on Palm Sunday is emphasized.
The illegitimate Israeli attack on a civilian health care institution is treated as somewhat normal. Despite its direct relation to Christian heritage and care there is no explicit mention that it took place on Palm Sunday.
This is an example of how propaganda inserts religion when it helps to condemn an "enemy" but leaves it out when it reports of the outrage committed by a "friendly" force
