A Russian missile hits a children’s hospital in central Kyiv

Serhiy, a cardiac surgeon, stepped out from the Okmatdyt’s main building at about 1.30pm local time. He had spent the previous two hours stabilising his patient, a little girl who had been in the middle of open-heart surgery when the blast ripped through the children’s hospital. “There was chaos, glass flying everywhere,” he says. The surgeon and his patient were lucky. Across the yard the toxicology unit at the centre of the strike was in ruins. Amid the foliage in between lay a woman’s corpse, bloody legs sticking out of the carpet that had been wrapped around her lacerated body.

The missiles that hammered down on Kyiv just before 11am on July 8th jolted the capital out of its sweaty summer daze. At least six missiles initially hit a military site 1.5km north of Ukraine’s leading specialised children’s hospital, piercing the sky in a terrifying staccato. But it was the missile that landed in Okmatdyt that was more shocking. Approximately 600 patients were in it at the time of the impact; the vast majority of the children were, thankfully, in bomb shelters.

An evacuation began almost immediately, with 100 of the most seriously ill transported to other hospitals in Ukraine. Above ground, they waited for transport in stunned silence, many attached to drips and life-support devices. For some, it was the second evacuation, having arrived in Kyiv from hospitals nearer the front line. The destruction of the hospital has left a serious gap in Ukraine’s health-care provision for the young.

The rescue effort was aided by volunteers who swiftly organised themselves like so many ants, removing bricks, cots, cladding material and corrugated roofing, piece by piece, in a desperate attempt to reach bodies trapped under the rubble of the toxicology unit. Medics distributed masks to journalists and rescuers.

A military source said the capital’s air defences had been overwhelmed by a meticulously planned barrage. The Russians had successfully overloaded Ukrainian systems, attacking from multiple directions and at multiple times. Many missiles flew together, making them hard to track. That meant the official estimate of 38 Russian missiles was probably a large undercount. “The fundamental problem is we don’t have enough interceptor rockets,” says the source. “We try to cover as best we can, but we just don’t have enough.” At least 44 people were killed in the Russian missile barrage in Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and other Ukrainian cities on July 8th.

Amid growing international outrage, the Kremlin has tried to distance itself from blame. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman, has blamed a Ukrainian anti-air missile. The video evidence, which shows an intact cruise missile striking the hospital, is incompatible with that claim. What is less clear is whether the Russian missile was deliberately aimed at the hospital, or missed another target nearby.

For the cardiac surgeon, it is irrelevant. “When you fire missiles on a multimillion city, you need to assume that it could fall on a child’s head in a park, or on a hospital. You need to think. You are responsible for the outcome.” ■

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