Ukraine war: Zelenskyy condemns Chernihiv strike, Putin meets generals, F-16s on the way

The attack happened as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Sweden on his first foreign trip since attending a NATO summit in Lithuania last month.

Images of the aftermath showed badly damaged buildings including a theatre with its roof blown away, mangled cars and survivors walking amid the debris with bloodstained clothes. The dead in the daytime strike included a 6-year-old girl, while 15 children were among the 129 wounded, Ukraine's Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

The square in front of the theater building had been bustling with life, with people returning from church after celebrating the Apple Feast of the Savior religious holiday, baskets of consecrated apples in hand, Klymenko said. Following the strike, debris from the theater roof littered the square, along with shattered glass from the windows of nearby cars and restaurants.

The strike hit the theatre during a gathering of drone manufacturers and aerial reconnaissance training schools, organiser Mariia Berlinska confirmed. Berlinska said that the event was officially agreed in advance with both the local authorities and the venue. 

The Chernihiv City Council denied that they had approved the event or issued any permits.

Zelenskyy said the attack showed Russia was a “terrorist state" and that the world must unite against it.

"A Russian missile hit right in the center of the city, in our Chernihiv,” he wrote on Telegram. “A square, the polytechnic university, a theater. An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss.”

Vladimir Putin has met with  the generals in charge of Russia's military operation in Ukraine at a meeting in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, the Kremlin announced on Saturday morning.

The authorities did