On September 3, Russian troops hit the territory of the Poltava Military Institute of Communications and the adjacent hospital in Poltava with two ballistic missiles. Now it is known about 41 dead, another 180 people are injured.
This was reported by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky said that the Russian strikes partially destroyed one of the buildings of the Poltava Military Institute of Communications.
"People are under the rubble. Many people were saved. More than 180 people were injured. Unfortunately, many people died. As of now, 41 people are known to have died," Zelensky informed.
The President ordered a full and prompt investigation into all the circumstances of what happened.
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine claims that the time interval between the alarm and the arrival was so short that people did not have time to take shelter. People were caught at the time of evacuation to the bomb shelter — 25 people were rescued, 11 of whom were unblocked from under the rubble.
All necessary services are working at the site of the impact, and the search and rescue operation is ongoing. A residential area is located near the place of impact — in the high-rise buildings there, the glazing was broken, the facades were damaged.
What preceded
On the morning of September 3, monitoring channels reported explosions in Poltava. Before that, the Telegram channel of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported about a missile in the direction of the city.
The consequences of the shelling were not reported after that. At 8:25 a.m., the head of the Poltava Regional Military Administration Philip Pronin wrote about technical explosive works in the territory of the Dykanka community and the Kremenchuksky district. 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.
As early as 11:37 a.m., the MP Maryana Bezuhla informed about a "repetition of the tragedy of the 128th brigade" (in November 2023, Russian troops hit the brigadeʼs soldiers while lining up). Bezuhla did not specify any details in the post, only saying that "the line-up in the 128th brigade did not teach anything, no one was punished.... We have repetition and repetition of tragedies."
Russian propagandists and "soldiers" recently wrote about the attack on the military school in Poltava during the lining-up. Images of the damaged high-rise building, the injured and the bodies of the dead were circulating on social networks.