Ukrainians Mourn Many Killed in Russian Strike Near Playground

Their lives intersected around a playground on a sunny Friday evening in Kryvyi Rih, a city in central Ukraine.

Kostiantyn Novik, 16, had come with his cousin to hang out with friends. Serhii Smotolok, a 57-year-old welder, was nursing a beer nearby on the terrace of a restaurant, unwinding after his workday. Radislav Yatsko, 7, was sitting in the back seat of his parents’ car as they drove past the playground, headed home from an afternoon at their country cottage.

In an instant, the lively scene turned to carnage: A Russian missile struck near the playground, raining shrapnel that tore apart everything in its path.

Kostiantyn and his cousin were killed instantly, Kostiantyn’s leg torn off by the blast. Mr. Smotolok was struck by missile fragments and bled to death on the terrace. Radislav died as shrapnel blew off part of his skull.

“Everything was covered in blood,” said his father, Rodion Yatsko. He begged the medics who arrived shortly after to save his son’s life. “Then one man came to our car, looked inside and said, ‘It’s over.’”

The attack last Friday killed 19 civilians, including nine children, making it the deadliest strike against children since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, according to the United Nations. The assault, the worst on Kryvyi Rih during the war, sent shock waves across Ukraine, which declared a day of national mourning on Sunday. Western allies expressed their solidarity, with embassies in Kyiv lowering their flags to half-staff that day.

For residents of Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the attack was a painful reminder that after three years the war is still grinding on, despite ongoing cease-fire negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Moscow continues to send volleys of missiles and drones into Ukrainian cities far from the front lines, despite the risk to civilians.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed that the strike had killed 85 Ukrainian and Western military officers gathered at the restaurant near the playground. But security footage reviewed by The New York Times showed that the restaurant had been filled with women attending a beauty industry event, and employees were cleaning up the room just minutes before the attack.

“They simply murder children and civilians,” Anna Yatsko, Radislav’s mother, said on Sunday, on the eve of her son’s funeral. “There were no soldiers, only civilians.”

“All the talks about a cease-fire are just empty words,” she added.

Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city of 600,000 about 40 miles from the front lines, has been struck regularly by Russian drones and missiles. Two days before Friday’s strike, a missile killed four residents.

Amid the hardship, residents yearn for moments of joy.

When 16-year-old Kostiantyn asked his aunt and legal guardian, Liubov Svoroba, if he and his cousin could hang out with friends at the playground, she hesitated but eventually agreed. The two teenagers enjoyed escaping the shadows of war there, often working out on rudimentary, colorful sit-up benches and chest-press machines scattered across the sandy terrain.

“They said they just wanted to go for a walk and see their friends,” Ms. Svoroba, 65, said. “As soon as they got there, the explosion happened.”

From her apartment a few blocks away, Olga Yaroshenko, 66, saw a huge plume of smoke and dust rising from the playground. Her first thought was of her partner, Mr. Smotolok, the welder who was drinking beer at the restaurant. They had been together for eight years, finding love later in life. They were saving money for a new car — Mr. Smotolok’s dream.

As Ms. Yaroshenko rushed to the strike site, she saw the bodies of a woman, a teenager and several children, some already covered with blankets by medics. “The whole area looked like a field of corpses,” she recalled. “There were cries, screams — it was unbearable.”

In the chaos, she could not find Mr. Smotolok and clung to the hope that he had made it out safely. Then her phone rang, his number flashing on the screen. “I felt relief — ‘He must be alive!’” she recalled thinking.

She answered the phone, only to hear a stranger’s voice: “This is the investigator speaking. Serhii Heorihiyovych died today,” a police officer told her, using her partner’s patronymic.

On Sunday, the area around the playground still bore scars of the carnage: bloodstains on the pavement, a piece of human flesh on a restaurant chair. Nearby buildings had shattered windows, and a deep crater created by the missile’s impact gaped a few yards from the playground.

It remains unclear exactly what type of weapon Russia fired at the park. The United Nations, which sent a team to inspect the area, and the local authorities believe that Russia used an Iskander ballistic missile that exploded several meters above the park, showering the area with shrapnel.

Mr. Yatsko, Radislav’s father, said their family was so inseparable that he used to think if a missile or drone ever struck, they would all die together. At least, he said, “no one would suffer” the pain of losing a loved one.

But on Friday, only Radislav was killed. His parents, his 8-month-old sister, Adelina, and his great-grandmother — all of whom were in the car when the missile struck — survived with concussions and scratches.

Ms. Yatsko had given birth to Radislav after struggling for years to get pregnant. When he arrived, she said, he “made everything so much better.”

He loved animals, spending hours at the family’s cottage collecting cockroaches, lizards and butterflies, when he was not rescuing hedgehogs from busy streets. At a school memorial on Monday, one of his teachers said she had never heard a boy speak with such tenderness about his little sister. When Ms. Yatsko was pregnant with Adelina, she said, Radislav would kiss her belly every night before bed.

At his funeral on Monday, Ms. Yatsko, wearing a black bandanna to represent her mourning, gazed at her son’s face as he was carried in an open coffin into a small wooden Orthodox Christian church. A gray hat concealed his head injury. A red scar running from his forehead to his bruised right eye was the only sign of trauma.

“It’s not him! It’s not him!” Ms. Yatsko cried, then muttered Radislav’s name three times, as if trying to wake him from a long sleep. Before burying him, his parents tucked a plush animal between his arms.

In the days after the attack, makeshift memorials sprang up across the park, with stuffed toys, candy bars, roses and candles covering benches, swings and teeter-totters where some of the children died. By Monday evening, the largest pile, nearly chest high, stood in the center of the playground, concealing a merry-go-round.

Ms. Yatsko said she longed for a life where children could run and play freely. “But for now,” she said, “even a children’s playground is not safe.”