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Ukraine President’s Hometown Plunged Into Mourning (Worthy News Radio)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

KRYVYI RIH/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – A frail Pope Francis urged prayers for Ukraine on Sunday on the day that Russia claimed to have captured two villages in the east and south of the war-torn nation despite talks of a ceasefire by U.S. President Donald J. Trump stumble. The latest fighting happened while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown plunged into mourning after one of the deadliest Russian attacks there so far.

Footage showed a woman shocked when she watched the smoke towering over the city from her balcony.

A Russian missile hit the central city of Kryvyi Rih that local authorities said killed at least 18 people, including some nine children.

Moscow claimed it had carried out “a high-precision missile strike” with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting with Ukrainian unit commanders and Western instructors took place. Kyiv rejects the claims.

Flowing this strike, another person reportedly died here in a separate Russian drone strike, officials said.

Now, a woman showed the damage to an apartment. She desperately searched for belongings that could be used to rebuild a shattered life.

Besides those killed ,as many as 80 people were injured in attacks since Friday, the youngest a 3-month-old, authorities said.

About half of them remained in hospital, with many in serious condition. It deeply touched Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as Kryvyi Rih is his hometown.

NO PEACE?

He says Russia isn’t interested in peace, despite efforts by U.S. President Trump to reach a ceasefire.

Four people were also reportedly killed in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, where a strike hit a hotel complex, and 21 others were injured, including a pregnant woman.

However, Russian authorities claim they suffer too, with at least one person reported dead in the Russian-occupied town of Horlivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region due to Ukrainian shelling on Saturday.

Yet Moscow struck back Sunday, claiming to have captured two villages in eastern and southern Ukraine.

The defense ministry said Moscow’s forces captured the village of Shchebraki in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and Panteleimonivka in the eastern Donetsk region.

President Zelenskyy also said that Russia had launched more than 170 drones into Ukraine overnight, striking several regions, including Kyiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv.

The bloodshed raised fears that U.S. hopes of an Easter peace deal may remain wishful thinking as prayers mount for an end to a war that is said to have killed and injured more than a million people.