Aug 2 (Reuters) – A Ukrainian drone strike killed one child and injured two others on Sunday in a playground in the Russian border region of Belgorod, the acting regional governor said, with a top Russian rights official denouncing the incident as an “inhumane terrorist act”.
Belgorod Governor Alexander Shavayev, in a message posted on Telegram, said the drone hit an area adjacent to the playground in the village of Printsevka, near the Ukrainian border.
Medics were unable to save a 13-year-old girl who suffered serious injuries, Shavayev said. Two girls, ages 7 and 9, were being treated in hospital.
Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that the strike near the playground was “another inhumane terrorist act by the Kyiv regime”.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova and for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the alleged war crime of unlawfully deporting children from areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.
Russia rejects the allegations.
There was no immediate response from Ukraine’s Defence Ministry to a request for comment on the latest incident.
There have been other strikes near playgrounds that killed children in the conflict that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In April 2025, a Russian missile strike on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s home city of Kryvyi Rih in southeastern Ukraine sprayed shrapnel across a dense residential area, including a playground, killing 11 adults and nine children.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Bogdan Kochubey; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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