Children slain by a Russian missile assault are buried by relatives

While fighting in the 14-month-long war claimed more lives elsewhere, relatives and friends wept next to coffins on Sunday as they laid to rest children and others killed in a Russian missile attack on this central Ukrainian city.

When two missiles hit an apartment block in Uman on Friday, nearly all 23 victims of the strike perished. Six children were among the fatalities, according to Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister of Ukraine.

At his sister Sofia Shulha’s funeral on Sunday, Mykhayl Shulha, 6, wept and embraced family members next to the coffin while others paid their respects to a 17-year-old boy.

People in Uman brought flowers and pictures of the victims to the destroyed building. On Sunday, more people died as a result of the war in Russia.

Four people were reportedly killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack, according to the governor of a region in Russia that borders Ukraine. According to Alexander Bogomaz, the regional governor of Bryansk, the missiles struck homes in the village of Suzemka, which is located 9 kilometres (6 miles) from the Ukrainian border. He said that two further locals had been hurt and that some of the approaching rounds had been deflected by the defences.

Throughout the war, there have been sporadic cross-border shelling incidents in Bryansk and the nearby Belgorod region. Two fatalities were recorded in March in what authorities claimed to be a Ukrainian saboteur infiltration in the Bryansk district.

Also on Sunday, the Ukrainian governor Oleksandr Prokudin claimed that 27 times in the previous 24 hours, Russian artillery fire struck his region of Kherson, killing one civilian.

The Kherson area, a gateway to Crimea and other Russian-occupied territories in the southern Ukrainian mainland, might be the focus of an anticipated springtime counteroffensive by Ukraine. Russian soldiers suffered a huge setback last year when Ukrainian forces pushed them out of Kherson, the provincial capital.

The counteroffensive, according to Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy, wouldn’t wait for the arrival of all the promised military hardware.