President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Monday that 87 people had been killed in an attack last week in the Chernihiv region north of the capital, Kyiv, in what appears to be one of the deadliest single incidents for the country since Russia invaded three months ago.
On May 17, local officials said that at 5 a.m., Russian forces had fired four missiles from an aircraft at Desna, a settlement on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River, where there is a substantial military training center. Two of the missiles hit a building, said the head of the provincial military administration, Vyacheslav Chaus, at the time.
“We have dead and many wounded,” Mr. Chaus said then.
On Monday, Mr. Zelensky gave the numbers.
“Unfortunately, according to the statistics, we’ve got 87 dead bodies, 87 victims,” he said during questions after he delivered a video address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I would hate going into emotions deeply at this point, but I can tell you that our country is losing a lot today, every day,” he said. “But it makes us stronger.”
It was not clear whether those killed were civilians or military personnel.
According to an analysis by The New York Times of videos posted on social media of the incident, the building that was hit was on the grounds of the military training center.
Those videos of the strike’s aftermath, as well as photos, showed flames pouring from the roof and upper windows of a heavily damaged building. Debris apparently from explosions was scattered across a wide area of grass outside.
Satellite images also appeared to show that at least one additional building inside the facility had been hit.
One day after the attack, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said high-precision, long-range and ground-based missiles destroyed enemy reserves that were completing combat coordination at training centers in Desna and another location.
Moscow has made several statements claiming to have damaged or destroyed other military facilities as well as Ukrainian convoys of weapons.
On March 13, Russian missiles decimated a military base at Yavoriv, a strategic hub for military training roughly a dozen miles from the border with Poland. That strike killed at least 35 people and injured 134 more, according to Ukrainian officials.
