According to Ukraine’s interior minister, members from “every family” in the north-eastern town of Hroza were affected by a missile assault that killed 51 people on Thursday.
A six-year-old child was among those killed when a café in Kharkiv was attacked during a wake.
“There were people present from every household,” Ihor Klymenko stated.
The strike was blamed on Russia, according to Ukraine’s defense minister, and there were no military objectives in the region.
Russia has not responded immediately to the strike.
However, Russia’s state news outlet Ria Novosti said that the Russian military had conducted 20 air and artillery attacks on Ukrainian targets in the Kupyansk area, which includes Hroza village. It made no mention of the dates of the strikes or the village of Hroza.
Russia then launched missile strikes on Kharkiv in the early hours of Friday, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov.
He told Ukrainian television that a 10-year-old kid was murdered when a residential structure was damaged. In addition, 16 persons were hurt.
The mayor went on to say that Russia was most likely using Iskander ballistic missiles in the current strike.
Members of the Hroza hamlet were attending the burial of a local Ukrainian soldier when the missile struck on Thursday.
Local prosecutor Dmytro Chubenko told Interfax-Ukraine that the man’s widow, as well as their son and daughter-in-law, were among the deceased.
The soldier was previously interred in Dnipro, but his relatives expressed a desire to rebury him in his hometown.
Officials reported that those who had attended the service were sitting down for a lunch when the missile struck the café, which also acted as a grocery store in the area.
According to Mr Klymenko, preliminary intelligence indicated that an Iskander missile struck the structure.
Maria Avdeeva, a Ukrainian security specialist and journalist, told BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight that someone may have informed the Russian military about the wake.
“We can presume that someone give out the information about the place and the time of the gathering of these people,” she continued.
“From what we see now on Russian propaganda channels, they circulate information that there were military gathering for the funeral, which is false and untrue because this were mainly a civilian ceremony.”
The incident was labeled as one of the region’s “bloodiest crimes” by Kharkiv regional chief Oleh Syniehubov.
“One fifth of this village has died in a single terrorist attack,” he stated.
The deed, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “couldn’t even be called a beastly act – because it would be an insult to beasts.”
International outrage has also followed the incident.
The incident “demonstrated the depths of depravity Russian forces are willing to sink to,” UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said. His remarks came after meeting Mr Zelensky on Thursday at a European Political Community conference in Spain, an international organization founded last year in reaction to the invasion of Ukraine.
Kharkiv regional head Oleh Syniehubov called the event one of the “bloodiest crimes” in the area.
“One fifth of this village has died in a single terrorist attack,” he said.
According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the conduct “couldn’t even be called a beastly act – because it would be an insult to beasts.”
The event has also sparked international anger.
The episode “demonstrated the depths of depravity Russian forces are willing to sink to,” according to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. His comments came after meeting Mr. Zelensky on Thursday at a European Political Community summit in Spain, an international body created last year in response to Ukraine’s incursion.
