An unknown number of people have been trapped under rubble after Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital was hit during a daylight Russian missile barrage that the authorities said had killed at least 29 people across the country.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed retaliation as he said Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt hospital, the main treatment centre in the country for children with cancer, had taken a direct missile hit. The strike was part of one of the heaviest attacks on the capital since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
“Russia cannot be unaware of where its missiles are landing and must be held fully accountable for all its crimes: against individuals, against children and against humanity as a whole” Zelenskiy posted on the Telegram messaging app.
Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister, said five people had been confirmed dead in the Kyiv hospital attack and at least four more had been injured.
The strike largely destroyed the hospital’s toxicology ward. Hundreds of rescue workers and volunteers joined the effort to clear the debris and search for survivors. Officials and emergency staff said it was not immediately clear how many doctors and patients remained trapped under the rubble.
“We are extracting whoever we can. We don’t know the number of people trapped there,” said the health minister, Viktor Liashko, outside the hospital.
Maria Soloshenko, 21, a nurse in the toxicology ward, said hospital staff had been in the process of moving the children to a bomb shelter when the explosion occurred. “There was immediate panic when the strike hit,” she said, her gloves covered in blood.
I would argue - again, as you said, no morale here - it is a very tactical move.
The more civilians die, the less there is support for the war to go on. Yes, some do feel more radicalized (“now I have nothing left to lose”) but I have come to learn that a majority feels just demoralized (“how many more need to die until this is stopped?”).
(Please note: whatever you or I think we would feel in that situation is irrelevant, you can’t know unless you are in this very conflict right now, and also - any kind of thinking and feeling and emotion is valid. Both and everything in between makes sense.)
The more civilians die or are harmed/attacked, the less the public feels safe. They aren’t because they know they are as much a target as a brigade. They know their enemy is ruthless. After over two years of constant fear and panic and death around you, you might very well start to disagree with a hardline position (“fight until Ukraine is free and Russia is defeated”). I’ve heard from much more refugees than I would have ever expected that they just want the conflict to end, yes, with losses on the Ukrainian side, with compromises that are not fair, but that they just want it to stop. Zelensky is losing popularity by the day because he has created that public image of someone who is not willing to compromise at any cost. Now imagine how amazing it must feel to Putin that people are mad that Zelensky cancelled the presidential election. It is obvious from the outside that holding an election, let alone changing a president in the middle of a war is insanity. For a lot of people, it is angering, since they don’t feel like the war will ever realistically stop with Zelensky in power.
The other effect of targeting civilians like that is of course that you drive them out of the country. You create a refugee crisis. You destabilize Europe, look at Germany, we constantly bitch about tOo MaNy RefUGeeS. It creates tension, it creates a financial drain, people don’t want to support the war with missiles anymore. It has already cost “their country” (i.e. Germany etc) too much.
So, yes, “only” 29 people have been confirmed dead so far. But the damage this missile created is much, much bigger than “just” 29 deaths. In some ways, this incredibly vicious tactic is brilliant.
Eh. Brilliant is maybe a stretch. Acknowledging the abject horror of the situation and putting it aside for the moment, this isn’t the first war where civilians have been targeted intentionally by bombing, and it certainly won’t be the last. Historically, the response to terror bombing such as this has been mixed, as such things are highly dependent on the population in question. Generally, however, the balance leans toward it being mostly a waste of resources. I’m sure the Russians think they’re doing some 4D chess maneuver, but from my perspective they’re just wasting valuable weapons systems (the missile that hit the hospital costs well in excess of one million dollars per and was part of a barrage) on targets which provide little or no military utility.
If I had to guess, this is more about domestic propaganda than anything else, but that’s just conjecture.