Strike on the Institute of Communications in Poltava. The number of dead and wounded increased

On September 3, Russian troops hit the territory of the Poltava Military Institute of Communications and the adjacent hospital with two ballistic missiles. Now it is already known about 53 dead and 298 injured people.

This was reported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

Starting today, September 4, a three-day mourning period was declared in the Poltava region in memory of those killed in a Russian missile strike.

Strike on Poltava on September 3

Around 09:10 on September 3, monitoring channels and the Air Force reported missiles in the direction of Poltava and explosions in the city. The consequences of the shelling were not reported for some time after that, but already at 10:39 the Department of Social Protection of the Population of the Poltava Regional State Administration published a post with an urgent invitation to all those willing to become blood donors.

At 11:37 a.m., the MP Maryana Bezuhla began hinting that the Russians hit the line-up at the Institute of Communications, declaring a "repetition of the tragedy of the 128th brigade" — in November 2023, Russian troops hit the brigadeʼs soldiers during the line-up. Russian propagandists and "militaries" wrote from the morning about the attack on the military school in Poltava during the formation. Images of the damaged high-rise building, the injured and the bodies of the dead were circulating on social networks.

Instead, the spokesman of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Dmytro Lazutkin stated in the evening that during the attack there was no line-up or any other measures — the students of the Institute started going down to the shelter immediately after the air raid alert was announced, but the explosions started to sound within a few minutes. Before that, his department said that the time interval between the alarm and the arrival was so short that people did not have time to take shelter.