Friends of victims dispute Ukraine's claim that Luhansk college strike targeted drone unit

Ukrainian drones struck two colleges in Russian-occupied Luhansk on the night of May 21–22, killing 21 people and wounding many more. Ukraine claimed the target was a Russian drone unit headquarters, but friends and classmates of the dead dispute this account. Around 80 students were in the shared dormitory at the time of the attack.

A Ukrainian drone strike on two colleges in the Russian-annexed Luhansk region on the night of May 21–22 has left 21 people dead and many more wounded, triggering a sharp dispute over whether the facilities were legitimate military targets. The Starobilsk Pedagogical College and the Vocational College of Luhansk Pedagogical University were both hit. The two institutions share a dormitory building, and because the vocational college has no basement of its own, students from both schools had been sheltering in the pedagogical college's basement during air raid warnings earlier that night.

Students returned before the strike

According to Russian officials, approximately 80 students were inside the shared dormitory when the drones hit, having returned to their rooms after an earlier alert had passed. Ukraine's military maintained that the strike targeted the headquarters of a Russian drone unit operating from the site — a claim that classmates and friends of those killed have forcefully rejected. Independent journalist cooperative Bereg spoke with people who knew the victims and said the buildings were used as ordinary student accommodation.

Conflicting narratives over the target

The Bereg cooperative, which brings together independent journalists, gathered accounts from friends and classmates of the 21 people who died. Their testimonies paint a picture of students who had been sheltering properly during the earlier warning and were caught in their dormitory rooms when the strike came. The accounts challenge Ukraine's framing that the facilities housed military infrastructure rather than civilian students.

The incident adds another deeply contested episode to the ongoing war in Ukraine, where attribution of civilian casualties in occupied territories remains fiercely disputed. The Luhansk region has been under Russian control since 2022, when Moscow formally annexed it along with three other Ukrainian oblasts despite not fully controlling any of them. Strikes on occupied Ukrainian territory regularly produce conflicting claims from Kyiv and Moscow about what was targeted and who was present.