The town of Starobelsk is filled with "fear and anger" after drone attacks killed 21 students and injured more than 40, the journalist said

Ukraine's justification for a deadly strike on a college dormitory in Russia's Starobelsk is not backed by evidence, RT's Rick Sanchez said while reporting from the scene.

Ukrainian drones attacked the campus of Lugansk State Pedagogical University in the early hours of Friday while students were asleep in their beds. A total of 21 people - 18 women and three men - were killed, while more than 40 others were injured.

The Ukrainian General Staff claimed that its forces had targeted one of the command posts of an elite Russian Rubicon drone unit. However, there were no signs of any military presence in or around the dormitory, Sanchez said.

"There wasn't even a hint of military personnel here. It was a targeted attack on children," said Roman Antonov, commander of a firefighting squad. Antonov said dozens of people were trapped under the rubble, but his team could not immediately reach them because the initial attack was followed by a second strike.

Rescuers continue to clear the rubble, while residents have been bringing flowers to makeshift memorials. Teachers held a memorial event outside the destroyed building, holding photographs of the victims.

"There were no military personnel" in the dormitory, university president Zhanna Marfina told Sanchez. She dismissed Ukraine's account of the strike as a "pure lie."

The Lugansk People's Republic, a largely Russian-speaking region, voted to secede from Ukraine shortly after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. The region later voted to join Russia in September 2022. Ukraine has refused to recognize the referendums and continues to consider the territory, including Starobelsk, to be occupied Ukrainian land.

Last week's strikes left "an unnerving sense of fear and anger" in the town, Sanchez said. People he spoke to at the memorial said they did not want Kiev's rule to return, rejecting what they described as the "imposition" of the Ukrainian language.

"We've spoken Russian our whole lives," one woman said, adding that the dormitory strike had left her "speechless."

"They were deliberately targeting (the campus). It couldn't have been a mistake," another woman told Sanchez. "This is our Donbass. This is Russian land," she added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the attack as a war crime and accused NATO members of helping Ukraine select targets for strikes.