Russian claims that western weapons used in attack on town in Moscow-controlled Luhansk region

Russia’s emergencies ministry said workers had retrieved the bodies of 20 people from the rubble following a Ukrainian attack on a building housing a bakery in the city of Lysychansk in the occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

On Saturday, the ministry shared video of emergency workers lifting two bloodied people on to stretchers and carrying them out of the ruins of a building. It said previously that its workers rescued 10 people and handed them to doctors.

The Moscow-installed governor of Lugansk, Leonid Pasechnik, said Kyiv had targeted a bakery that was known to have fresh bread on weekends.

RIA Novosti published a video of a heavily damaged building, with emergency workers pulling out an entirely crushed car.

The one-storey building had a large sign on it that read “Restaurant Adriatic” and appeared entirely destroyed and covered in rubble.

Russia’s state-run Tass news agency quoted a Moscow-installed official in operational services as saying the average age of the victims was “35 years, plus or minus five years”.

“There are no children among the dead at the moment, but the removal of rubble is still ongoing,” the official was quoted as saying.

Ukrainian officials have not made any statement on the incident.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said “dozens of civilians” were in the building at the time of the attack and that western weapons were used.

The Russia-controlled Luhansk Information Centre said Ukraine shelled the bakery using the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

Pasechnik, put in charge of Ukraine’s Luhansk region by Moscow, said dozens of people may be under the rubble.

The emergencies ministry said the search and rescue effort would continue into the night.

Lysychansk had a population of about 111,000 people before Russia’s offensive.

Russia took control of it and its twin city of Sievierodonetsk in the summer of 2022 after some of the most brutal battles of its almost two-year offensive.

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