• 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. 

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. 

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." 

 

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 more than 127,000 times. 

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. 

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