A Russian attack on a school housing civilians left 60 dead, Ukraine denounced on Sunday, while the G7 ratified its support for kyiv a day before Moscow holds an ostentatious commemoration of the victory against the Nazis in World War II.
Amid intense fighting, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky confirmed the death toll of 60 dead in Saturday’s Russian attack on a school in the eastern town of Bilogorivka, one of the highest death tolls in a single day since The Russian invasion began on February 24.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will lead Monday’s commemorations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, but Ukraine wants to deny Moscow any sense of military might. Putin has sought to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine by comparing it to the fight against Nazism and the national pride it aroused.
“Today our soldiers, like their ancestors, fight shoulder to shoulder for the liberation of their homeland from Nazi filth, confident that, as in 1945, victory will be ours,” Putin said, on the eve of the celebrations of the Victory Day.
Zelensky also pointed to the end of the 1939-45 war by comparing Ukraine’s struggle to the war of resistance against former Nazi occupiers.
“Decades after World War II, darkness returned to Ukraine, and it has turned black and white again,” he declared in a video recorded outside a bombed-out residential building.