Palm Sunday in Sumy: Russia's Deadliest Civilian Strike of 2025

A Russian missile attack on Sumy during Palm Sunday services kills at least 34 civilians, including children, marking the most lethal assault on Ukrainian civilians this year

Source: Associated Press

Hey Small Biters,

​There’s no such thing as a ceasefire when the missiles keep falling.

This week, as Ukrainians in the northeastern city of Sumy gathered to mark Palm Sunday, Russian missiles rained down on the city center. Two Iskander-M ballistic missiles struck just before noon. One hit a crowded trolleybus. The other, a university conference hall, just before a children's performance. Thirty-four civilians were killed. Two were children. More than 100 people were injured.

It was the single deadliest attack on civilians in Ukraine this year — and a moment that has jolted the international community back to attention.

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Ukrainian officials say the weapons used included cluster munitions — designed to fragment on impact, increasing the death radius. These are not military strikes. They are civilian punishment.

President Zelensky, in a visibly shaken video address, called it “terror dressed as tactics,” and accused Russia of staging the attack to coincide with a religious holiday to maximize symbolic trauma. His foreign minister said the timing — Palm Sunday — showed “an appetite not just for conquest, but cruelty.”

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The images emerging from Sumy are haunting. A burning trolley. Children’s backpacks scattered across a courtyard. Survivors crawling from twisted metal. The theater’s foyer carpeted in glass and blood. Families arriving for a celebration and leaving without each other.

This was not a frontline attack. This was not a military misfire. This was a message.

The Sumy region, which borders Russia, has been under increasing pressure in recent weeks, with aerial assaults escalating dramatically. Ukrainian defense officials say this is part of a renewed campaign to destabilize the border and clear paths for ground incursions deeper into the country's northeast.

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What made the strike even more jarring is that it happened just 48 hours after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin to discuss possible pathways to a settlement. Ukraine had even signaled willingness to explore a ceasefire framework. But this — this strike — suggests Moscow’s intentions lie elsewhere.

In Europe, leaders reacted with fury. French President Emmanuel Macron called it “a crime in broad daylight.” EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas demanded that Russia face consequences not only militarily, but legally — calling the strike “a grotesque breach of wartime ethics, religious decency, and basic human morality.”

And yet… we’ve heard this before. Condemnation. Outrage. “Strong statements.” And then — silence.

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This isn’t the first time Sumy has been hit. In the earliest days of the war, it was briefly encircled. But the targeting of a city center — not for strategic gain, but to instill grief — represents an escalation not just in tactics, but in the psychological toll.

It follows another deadly strike just 10 days earlier in Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, where nine children were among 20 killed. Patterns are forming. And still, the weapons come.

Analysts are calling this a shift back to “shock campaign” strategies, designed to paralyze Ukrainian morale and fracture Western unity. And it may be working. In the U.S., aid remains stalled. In Europe, election seasons are bringing political fractures. And in Ukraine, people just keep dying.

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✍️

The palms were still green, laid out with care—
when fire fell from a foreign air.

The pews were empty, the buses aflame.
They didn’t ask questions. They just took names.

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🧭 A Small Bite to Carry

• There is no pause in a war when one side profits from cruelty.

• What happened in Sumy is not collateral — it’s strategy.

• The cost of indifference will always be paid by civilians.

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US Stocks

US stocks fly into weekend on optimism for trade deals

The S&P 500 rose 1.8%, the Nasdaq 100 gained 1.9%, and the Russell 2000 booked a gain of 1.6%. So ends the best week for the benchmark US index since 2023, and tops for the tech-heavy gauge since 2022.

Stocks bumped up in the afternoon after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Donald Trump was “optimistic” on reaching a trade deal with China.

JPMorgan unofficially kicked off earnings season with a big earnings beat fueled by record equity trading revenues.

Apple was the top-performing member of the Magnificent 7, rising 4%. China’s tariffs caused substantial dispersion in the chips industry, where the likes of Nvidia and AMD rallied as they outsource production to Taiwan, while Intel and Texas Instruments sold off. TSMC was a big gainer after reporting that sales were up 42% year on year in the first quarter.

GameStop rose as retail traders were excited by some insider purchases.

What Else Are We Biting

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Biting Fact Of The Day

Your nails grow faster in hot summer. This is probably due to increased blood supply to the fingertips.