Businessman killed while picking up Easter cakes as Russians strike confectionery workshop in Sumy
A Russian Shahed drone has struck a workshop belonging to a confectionery business in the city of Sumy, damaging the production of Easter cakes. A businessman who arrived to collect festive products has been killed in the strike.
Source: Mykhailo Melnyk, Head of Sumy District State Administration, on Facebook
Quote: "The enemy launched a strike using a Shahed UAV on a confectionery workshop in the city of Sumy at around 05:00. The production of Easter cakes was damaged. A businessman who had come for the products was killed."
Scattered cake molds
Photo: Mykhailo Melnyk on Facebook
Details: An employee of the confectionery workshop also sought medical treatment.
Easter cake dough
Photo: Mykhailo Melnyk on Facebook
Cakes
Photo: Mykhailo Melnyk on Facebook
Background: Earlier, it was reported that the Russians had attacked an industrial facility in the city of Sumy on the morning of 18 April, killing one person.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
Russia: Other nations ready to supply Iran with nukes after U.S. strike
President Donald Trump is joined by his national security team in the Situation Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Saturday, June 21, 2025, as U.S. bombers executed strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Photo via The White House/UPI | License Photo June 22 (UPI) -- In the wake of President Donald Trump's strike on Iran's nuclear sites Saturday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that "a number of countries" are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear weapons. Gen. Dan Caine said at a Pentagon press conference Sunday that measuring the damage at the sites would take time but that an initial assessment indicates that all three sites sustained "severe damage and destruction." He revealed that the mission involved 75 precision-guided munitions, including 14 GBU-57 bunker-busters. "Do you remember that the operation was beginning, I promised you that Iran's nuclear facilities would be destroyed, one way or another. This promise is kept," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media, revealing that the strike was carried out by the United States in "full coordination" with the Israeli Defense Forces. While Israeli and American authorities have indicated major damage at Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan, Iranian and Russian authorities have indicated only minor damage to Iran's capabilities for nuclear enrichment. "What have the Americans accomplished with their nighttime strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran?" Medvedev questioned in a post on social media. "The enrichment of nuclear material -- and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons -- will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Medvedev said Iran's political leadership has survived despite Israel's apparent pursuit of a regime change and may have "come out even stronger." Like Russia, Iran ally Pakistan is armed with nuclear weapons but said Thursday that it had not yet received requests for any military assistance from Iran while expressing alignment with its neighbor. It has since condemned the U.S. attack on Iran. "The unprecedented escalation of tension and violence, owing to ongoing aggression against Iran, is deeply disturbing. Any further escalation of tensions will have severely damaging implications for the region and beyond," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday. Sa'eed Iravani, Iran's ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, has called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Iranian state media reported Sunday. Iran is calling for the Security Council to rebuke the United States, which is a permanent member of the UNSC. The Russian Foreign Ministry also released a statement condemning the strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, calling them a violation of international law and the United Nations charter. It called the attack a "substantial blow to the global non-proliferation regime built around the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons." "They have significantly undermined both the credibility of the NPT and the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) monitoring and verification mechanisms that underpin it," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. China's Foreign Ministry likewise said the United States had violated the U.N. charter and international law as it called for Israel to reach a ceasefire "as soon as possible." "China stands ready to work with the international community to pool efforts together and uphold justice, and work for restoring peace and stability in the Middle East. A Telegram account affiliated with the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps said Sunday that satellite images show Iran had evacuated everything from the Fordow site 48 hours before the US attack and moved it to a safe location. "This image shows a large number of trucks that had quickly evacuated enrichment materials, equipment and other supplies from the Fordow site," the post reads. "It is clear that Trump's failed and dramatic attack not only did not damage the underground Fordow facilities, but the site was empty." Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA, said Sunday he will call an emergency meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors on Monday after the American strike. He said Iranian nuclear officials had not recorded an increase in off-site radiation levels. "As of this time, we don't expect that there will be any health consequences for people or the environment outside the targeted sites," Grossi said. "We will continue to monitor and assess the situation in Iran and provide further updates as additional information becomes available." In apparent criticism of the United States, Grossi said he had "repeatedly stated that nuclear facilities should never be attacked." He called for Israel and the U.S. to stop their "hostilities" against Iran so that the IAEA's "vital inspection work" in Iran could continue. Meanwhile, the IRGC-affiliated Telegram channel said Sunday that Iran struck Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, as well as a biological research center that reportedly housed research into biological warfare, among other military targets. "This time, sirens sounded after the precise hits, throwing the enemy off balance," the statement said. "We announce that the main parts of the capacity of the Islamic Republic of Iran's armed forces in this sacred defense have not yet been put into operation." Meanwhile, Israel's war against Gaza continues. The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that the death toll has risen to 55,959 people while medical facilities are facing blood shortages. The WAFA news agency reported Sunday that Israeli forces reportedly detained at least 26 Palestinians in the West Bank on Sunday after conducting overnight raids.


Newsweek
3 hours ago
- Newsweek
Russia Says Countries Now Ready to Supply Iran With Nuclear Weapons
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said Sunday that President Donald Trump "has pushed the US into another war" and that countries are "ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Medvedev made the remarks on Telegram, outlining his views on what the Trump administration's strikes on Iran would lead to moving forward. His comment came after the United States carried out attacks targeting three nuclear sites across the Persian Gulf nation—at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. "The enrichment of nuclear material—and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons—will continue," Medvedev, a top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, wrote in his Telegram post. "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." This is a developing story and will be updated with additional information.


Politico
3 hours ago
- Politico
How Germany Changed Its Mind About America, Thanks to Donald Trump
Five days after his election victory in February, Friedrich Merz's world collapses. That's how he will describe it later. That Friday evening, he steps off the stage at a large conference center in Hamburg's port, where cruise ships usually moor. He has just been hailed as 'the future federal chancellor,' and more than a thousand party supporters have cheered on their chairman at a rally of the local chapter of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany's main center-right party. At around 8:15 p.m., he shakes a few hands in farewell, then drops into the backseat of his official car for the three-hour drive home. It is February 28, 2025. Merz checks his phone and notices a message from his spokesperson. He should watch a video, preferably immediately. Merz pulls out his iPad, opens the link, and recognizes a room familiar to anyone who follows politics. Two armchairs upholstered in gold damask sit in front of a fireplace with no fire burning. In front of the fireplace is a table made of fine wood inlaid with an oversized seal. It's the Oval Office in the White House. To Donald Trump's right sits a small, bearded man in a black military sweater embroidered with a stylized trident, the national symbol of Ukraine. It is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, a country invaded by Russia. Merz holds him in high esteem. Merz has visited Zelenskyy twice in Kyiv and, just a few days ago, accepted Zelenskyy's congratulations on his election victory. Ukraine has high hopes for Merz. The new chancellor is expected to finally provide the Taurus, a German cruise missile capable of penetrating bunkers, which Merz's more liberal predecessor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, refused to provide throughout his time in office. In the video, Zelenskyy looks tired. Tired and helpless. Merz is dismayed as he watches the U.S. president humiliate his Ukrainian counterpart. Trump accuses him of endangering millions of lives and risking a third world war. When Zelenskyy retorts that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who started the war, Trump interjects harshly. In front of the cameras, Zelenskyy is scolded like a naughty child for several minutes. 'Did you ever say thank you?' Vice President JD Vance asks Zelenskyy, hurling this question at him several times. 'That was good television,' Trump says at the end of the meeting. The subsequent talks, which were supposed to be about security guarantees after a ceasefire, are canceled. A fully negotiated raw materials agreement is not signed. The celebratory lunch is canceled. Zelenskyy waits another 20 minutes in an adjoining room. Then, an official appears and simply sends him away. Merz has just finished watching the nearly 40-minute scene when he posts a solidarity message to Zelenskyy in English on X: 'We must never confuse the aggressor with the victim in this war!' He is on the phone nonstop in the car until he arrives in Sauerland and then for half the night. He also speaks with Scholz, who would still be chancellor for another two months. Scholz and his designated successor agree that something historic happened that day in Washington. The Americans are threatening not only to abandon Ukraine but also all their allies. Is Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which requires every member to come to the defense of every other member, still to be taken seriously? Would U.S. soldiers defend Germany against a Russian attack? Are American nuclear missiles still a credible deterrent? The two men agree that given these circumstances, Germany must rebuild its national defenses. As quickly as possible and at whatever cost. And it will cost a lot, between 1 and 1.5 trillion euros over the next 12 years — double the previous amount. Spending that much money on defense isn't easy. In Germany, the 'Schuldenbremse' or 'debt brake' is a fiscal rule enshrined in the Constitution. It is designed to limit the amount of new government debt to a maximum of 0.35 percent of gross domestic product. Before the elections, Merz campaigned on keeping the debt brake and insisted as chancellor he could do without extra debt. But in the coming days, Merz will flip his position and agree to this new borrowing. The humiliation of Zelenskyy has changed everything. This account of the election of Merz and his first days as Germany's incoming chancellor is based on more than 50 conversations with sources, some close to Merz, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. Merz's doubts about his prior convictions had been building for weeks. A few days before the general election, Merz met with Vance in Munich. Merz wanted to dissuade the American vice president from publicly urging Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. 'These are not friends of America,' Merz said, 'but partisans of Putin.' Vance nodded in apparent agreement. Just a few hours later, during his speech at the Munich Security Conference, Vance stunned the audience. He declared that restrictions on freedom of speech in the EU are a greater threat than Russia or China. He called for firewalls to be torn down across Europe and for right-wing populists to be included in politics. The vice president did not mention the AfD by name. However, a few hours later, reports circulated that Vance had met with not only Merz, but also with AfD leader Alice Weidel at his hotel before the speech. He had not told Merz about this meeting. Even then, two weeks before Zelenskyy's humiliation in the Oval Office and one week before the Bundestag elections, Merz had begun privately considering the need for Germany to take on additional billions in debt. 'What the new American president, Donald Trump, has said in Washington these last few days…' he told the audience from the campaign stage in Hamburg, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the global political landscape.' Following the Munich Security Conference, Merz discreetly asked former Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio to explore whether it would be possible to amend Germany's Basic Law with the votes of the outgoing Bundestag. The 'Basic Law' is Germany's equivalent of a constitution. It can only be changed by a two-thirds majority in parliament. That also applies to the debt brake. Getting a two-thirds vote would be possible with the old Bundestag, but not the new Bundestag that was expected to have a higher representation of AfD and other fringe parties. Shortly afterwards, Di Fabio sent him his expert opinion. Amendments to the Basic Law with the votes of MPs who had already been voted out of office were possible up to 30 days after the election. That would be March 25, the same day the new Bundestag would be seated. Merz would have less than a month to execute an about-face. On the day of the election, Merz gave the first public signal that his thinking was changing when he appeared with other candidates on the Berliner Runde, a television program in which party leaders comment on the election as soon as the polls close. 'For me, it will therefore be an absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,' he said. Independence from the USA? Scholz, sitting right next to Merz on TV, could hardly believe it. Until now, European politicians had carefully avoided suggesting that Europe could manage its defense without the Americans. Germany, which has neither its own nuclear weapons nor a robust army, needs American troops and their nuclear umbrella more than anyone. Merz, considered a staunch transatlanticist, was giving up on the USA? 'Since U.S. President Donald Trump's statements last week, it has been clear to me that this administration is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,' Merz continued. A summit of the transatlantic military alliance is scheduled for the end of June. 'Will we even be talking about NATO in its current form then?' he asked. 'Or will we then have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly?' The next day, when the election results had been tallied, Merz praised the outcome in a press conference: 29 percent was much less than the Christian Democrats had hoped for, but Merz argued it was a success if you look at the number of votes rather than percentage points. The Christian Democrats gained 2.5 million votes compared to the previous Bundestag election, and the Christian Socialists gained 500,000, he noted. What he failed to mention is that the AfD gained over 6 million votes. After an election campaign more polarizing than any in decades, more people turned out to vote than in previous years, and the AfD was the beneficiary. Merz was genuinely outraged by the scene in the Oval Office. But he also knew he could use this indignation to his advantage. After all, he would need a credible narrative to justify the political turnaround, the astronomical increase in defense spending, that will take place under his leadership. The election results meant that, for the first time since World War II, centrist parties no longer have a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Without a two-thirds majority, centrist parties cannot elect judges to the Federal Constitutional Court, declare war on an invader or amend the Basic Law. For example, to reform the debt brake. The situation is reminiscent of the late phase of the Weimar Republic. At that time, the National Socialists and Communists together held over 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, preventing the Social Democrats, Liberals and Christian Democrats from governing effectively — thus fueling growing frustration with democracy. This created a vicious circle that led to the collapse of the first republic at the beginning of the 1930s. Is this a bold comparison? The AfD and other fringe parties already control a blocking minority in the state parliaments of three German states: Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. The same will be true in the Bundestag when the new MPs are seated March 25. Scholz also played a role in urging Merz's turnaround. In meetings unnoticed by the public, Scholz and Merz met several times in the chancellor's office after the Bundestag elections, sometimes with other center-right politicians present. At one of these meetings, Scholz presented intelligence service findings on the immense scale of the Russian arms buildup. Despite the enormous losses in Ukraine, Putin would have considerably more tanks and missiles in just a few years than before the invasion. The intelligence suggested he is preparing to wage another war, this time against Europe. Scholz, who campaigned as a peace chancellor, advised his successor to do the opposite: to massively rearm. Germany's new government coalition joined Merz's Christian Democrats with Scholz's Social Democrats. In the days after the election, the coalition partners convened private negotiations to reach a spending plan they could implement before March 25. In those talks, the sums involved increased by the hour. On March 4, when the partners reappeared in public to announce their deal, there was great astonishment. There were no longer any limits to rearmament. Merz secured special funds for a defense build-up over the next 10 years that were five times larger than an increase Scholz negotiated just three years ago. An additional special fund of 500 billion euros had been agreed upon for rebuilding the country's infrastructure. Why was Merz, the avowed debt hawk, now so willing to push Germany so deep into debt? 'In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the same must now apply to our defense: Whatever it takes!' Merz said at a press conference. The saying was a quote from Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, who used this slogan in 2012 to scare off speculators who wanted to bet on a breakup of the eurozone. Now Merz used the same quote to explain his rearmament plan. At a parliamentary group meeting later that day, Merz reported that he would be traveling to Brussels to take part in the meeting of the heads of state and government of the EU Council. And then he said something curious: 'If Trump announces his withdrawal from NATO tonight, then we, the Federal Republic of Germany, will be the first to have reacted correctly in advance.' There was horror among the MPs. Merz was deadly serious. The total turnaround in financial policy began after the shock appearance by Vance at the Munich Security Conference. Merz justified it by pointing to the humiliation of Zelenskyy at the White House. But now he was talking about an imminent U.S. withdrawal from NATO. How did Merz get this idea? Trump was set to give his first speech to a joint session of Congress that same night. Merz explained to close allies later that he had received information from an American source indicating that Trump would use the speech to announce a U.S. withdrawal from the Western defense alliance. He had reason to trust his source. Two weeks earlier, the source had provided him with advance information on Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. Merz held a conference call the night before the speech and warned Christian Democratic leaders that Vance would shake the transatlantic friendship and launch a rhetorical attack on Europe. That is exactly what happened. Merz and his allies were prepared. Warned once again, Merz expected the worst from Trump's speech to Congress. During conversations and phone calls with confidants, he made it even clearer than he had in the parliamentary group meeting that if Trump announced a NATO withdrawal that night, Putin might react immediately with an attack on the Baltic states. During those hours when he agreed Germany should take on a trillion-euro debt, Merz was acting on the belief that a new war in Europe was possible and NATO was on the brink of collapse. His vote in favor of the record debt came against this dramatic backdrop. As we know, things turned out differently. Trump delivered his congressional speech but did not mention a withdrawal from NATO. To this day, Merz does not believe that his Washington source misinformed him. The NATO withdrawal announcement had been prepared, he believes. Trump changed his mind at the last minute. (POLITICO Magazine asked the White House to respond to the assertion that Trump had considered using his March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress to announce a U.S. withdrawal from NATO. In an emailed statement, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, 'Such an announcement was never included in any draft of any speech.')