Earlier in the summer, the Russian military launched an attack that destroyed a large part of the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv. As the world witnessed the harrowing scenes that followed the bombing, investigations began to understand what exactly happened. Unsurprisingly, Moscow did not cooperate.
Russia’s July 8 attack on Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt children’s hospital is a stark reminder of the horrific brutality the Kremlin unleashed on Ukraine with its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
But what is almost more egregious is the fact that Russia and its officials have tried to deny guilt in the tragedy that killed 33 people, as well as five children.
Immediately after the attack, Russian officials began accusing Ukraine of being to blame for the hospital attack, a recurring Russian modus operandi aimed at muddying waters related to Ukraine’s defense and foreign relations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, for example, said: “I invite you to be guided by the statements of the Russian Ministry of Defence, which excludes attacks on civilian targets and says that we are talking about a fall of the anti-missile system.
Similar rhetoric emerged in the hours and days after the denunciation of the tragedy by Ukrainian and U. S. air defense.
Ukrainian security said the attack was a direct Russian attack, unearthing fragments of a Kh-101 missile, its serial number and parts of its guidance system, refuting Moscow’s claims and attempts to blame Ukraine.
For witnesses to the tragedy, however, there is little doubt about the culprit of this horrible crime.
Valentina, a doctor who was operating on a 10-year-old girl at the time of the attack, told The Moscow Times that there were two attacks. Referring to the hospital complex, she said: “During the operation, one of the missiles hit here. »After the first explosion, Valentina and her team of doctors immediately began to evacuate the child, ending the operation prematurely, but successfully.
“We had taken the child, the woman, and we were leaving and they shot us while we were evacuating,” Valentina recalled minutes after the attack, pointing to the intensive care unit and the hospital building. oncology directly affected by the Russian missile.
The United Nations and independent evaluations tell Valentina’s story.
The U. N. assessment aligns with research by weapons experts. As CNN reported and mentioned to a UN official, a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile likely hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday, June 8.
Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said that “the analysis of the video footage and the assessment at the scene of the incident imply a higher probability that the children’s hospital suffered a direct hit than that it was injured by an intercepted weapon. “”.
Similarly, Bellingcat, the world-famous open source journalism and investigative studies organization, has published the effects of its research on the June 9 attack. Using videos of the missile hitting the hospital, a three-dimensional rendering of the missile, and images of Among the Missile Debris, Bellingcat was able to identify that it was indeed a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile that hit the Okhmatdyt hospital.
For eyewitnesses and those who suffered the tragedy, there is little debate about who is to blame for the attack. Rescuers and volunteers who rushed to the scene on July 8, lamenting the unimaginable horror and searching for survivors in the rubble, declared Russia entirely guilty of the attack, as well as the unlimited suffering in Ukraine over the past two and a half years.
The attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital is not the first Russian attack on a gym since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. A report by the World Health Organization showed 1,682 attacks on gyms in Ukraine, resulting in 128 deaths. and 288 injuries among medical personnel and patients in recent years.
The most memorable is the airstrike on Mariupol’s No. 3 maternity hospital on March 9, 2022, which killed four other people and injured many more.
While the final investigation by the Ukrainian authorities into the June 8 Okhmatdyt attack, as well as those of other European countries, is very likely to conclude that Russia and its military are guilty of this war crime, a member and pilot of the Russian 22nd Regiment The Heavy Bomber Division, a brigade allegedly guilty of the bombing, He also provided data on the attack and its perpetrators, reinforcing the arsenal of evidence.
Although Russia’s claims that a Ukrainian air defense missile was the incident will likely fall on deaf ears, for now it is unlikely to have significant political or legal repercussions for Russia.
Instead, evidence and investigations – Ukrainian and from foreign organizations – will complement the growing accumulation of war crimes committed through and against Russia in and against Ukraine.
However, for those suffering and their families, justice will only come through revenge on the battlefield or through criminal prosecution of those who ordered and carried out the June 8 hospital attack.
Joshua R. Kroeker is an independent researcher, founder of the specialized analysis firm Reaktion Group, analyst of the political research project R. Politik and editor of RANE. He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia in Canada, the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and St. Petersburg State University in Russia. @jrkroeker on Twitter.
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