- A viral Russian social media post appears to mock a little girl killed in Ukraine on Saturday.
- A picture of a memorial to 6-year-old Sophia attracted thousands of 'laughing' emojis in a Russian post.
- The UN has condemned the missile strike on Chernihiv, which saw 144 casualties.
Ukrainian Ministry of Defense/Twitter/X
Tens of thousands of "laughing" reactions appeared on Russian social-media posts about the memorial of a Ukrainian child who was killed in a Russian air strike over the weekend.
Six-year-old Sophia was among seven people killed and 144 injured in the strike on Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, per officials.
The attack, on a city with little obvious military significance, prompted condemnation from the UN, whose spokesperson Saviano Abreu called it "heinous."
On Sunday, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense posted an image of a memorial to a little girl, lit only by a candle and surrounded by flowers.
—Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 20, 2023
Another image of the same memorial, however, has circulated on Russian social media, with a different reaction.
A post on a pro-Russian Telegram account, first highlighted on X by security analyst Jimmy Rushton, features the image along with the caption: "Chernihiv. For sale: Children's shoes, never worn."
—Jimmy Rushton (@JimmySecUK) August 20, 2023
The post references a short story attributed to Ernest Hemingway, designed to convey tragedy in just six words.
But the post has been taken as a macabre joke, with more than 45,000 "laughing" emojis in Rushton's screenshot, shared on Sunday. As of Monday, the post had 64,400 such emojis, as well as a much smaller number of negative reactions. The post had been viewed some 127,000 times, suggesting that around half of viewers responded with the laughing react.
Though neither the Ukrainian MOD post nor the pro-Russian account named the girl, they appear to both refer to Sophia, the young victim.
Chernihiv's mayor, Oleksandr Lomako, told the BBC the site that was struck — a theater —was hosting a conference of drone manufacturers.
According to Yuriy Belousov, Ukraine's prosecutor general, the theater was struck by an Iskander-M ballistic missile, which was air-detonated to exact maximum damage, Ukrainian state news outlet Suspilne reported.
At the time of the blast, people were leaving a church service on the day of a major feast in the Ukrainian Orthodox calendar, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said on Saturday.