A missile attack on a convoy of cars in southern Ukraine killed several civilians on Friday, hours before President Vladimir Putin was due to proclaim Moscow’s rule over lands seized from Ukraine.

The convoy was assembling in a car park near Zaporizhzhia to carry people and supplies into Russian-held territory in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia province. 

The regional capital is still controlled by Ukraine. A missile had gouged a crater in the ground near two lines of vehicles. The impact had thrown chunks of dirt into the air and sprayed the vehicles with shrapnel. The windows of the vehicles – mostly cars and three vans, were blown out.

Reuters saw around a dozen bodies, four of them in cars.

“So far, 23 dead and 28 wounded. All civilians,” Zaporizhzhia regional governor Oleksandr Starukh wrote on Telegram.

The vehicles were packed with the occupants’ belongings, blankets and suitcases. A body leaned from the driver’s seat into the passenger seat of a yellow car, his left hand still clutching the steering wheel.

The attack took place hours before President Vladimir Putin was due to stage a ceremony in an ornate Kremlin hall to proclaim Russia’s rule over around 15 per cent of Ukraine, the biggest European annexation since Hitler.

It would be followed by a celebratory pop concert outside the Kremlin walls on Red Square. Russia’s annexation of the Russian-occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia has been condemned in the West and beyond.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called it a “dangerous escalation” and a violation of the United Nations charter.

In a Thursday evening address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “It can still be stopped. But to stop it, we have to stop that person in Russia who wants war more than life. Your lives, citizens of Russia.”

The Russian annexation, held after what the West denounced as bogu referendums at gunpoint in occupied territory, followed weeks of defeats for Moscow’s forces on the battlefield in which they were routed from their positions in Ukraine’s northeast.

Mr Putin has ordered the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of Russian reservists, forcing tens of thousands of Russian men to flee over borders to escape being shipped off to war.

Military experts said Russia could soon be facing one of its biggest defeats of the war so far, with thousands of troops trapped in Lyman, the last major Russian stronghold in the north of Donetsk province.

(NAN)