Olena Shevchuk was waiting for treatment for her four-year-old daughter, Yasmina, at Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt children’s hospital when a Russian missile slammed into a nearby street. As air raid sirens wailed across the city, they ran, hearts pounding, to a bomb shelter.
They had just entered the shelter when a Russian cruise missile struck the toxicology wing, wrecking the building and causing extensive destruction to the rest of the facility, the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine. More than 600 children were at the hospital at the time, officials said.
“It was so loud and we were so scared,” Shevchuk, 34, told The Times, speaking through tears as she recalled one of the darkest days of the war for Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Inside the shelter, the ceiling began to shake from the impact. “We were scared that the ceiling would fall in on us,” Shevchuk said. “We were covered in dust. The children were frightened, they started to panic. Everyone started running out, trying to escape from the shelter. It’s good that the Okhmatdyt workers were there. They told us, ‘Don’t go out. It’s more dangerous out there. Stay here; we are safe.
“It was difficult to say how much time we spent down there. It wasn’t clear if an hour had passed, or a minute. There was some man covered in blood, I don’t know why, maybe he had fallen, or had been hit by shrapnel. There was a boy, about eight, who was holding on to his mum and crying, ‘Mum, I don’t want you to die’.”
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Above them, Kyiv was being ripped apart by a blistering barrage of Russian cruise and ballistic missiles. At least 29 people died in attacks across the Ukrainian capital, with around another 15 deaths elsewhere in the country. Ten residents of a single apartment block were killed in Kyiv, while seven people died at a medical facility on the left bank of the city, Vitali Klitschko, the mayor, said.
At least two people, a doctor and an adult visitor, were killed at the hospital, which specialises in treating children with cancer, autoimmune diseases and other serious illness. Many of the children were hooked up to life-saving equipment at the time of the attack and had to be evacuated when power and oxygen supplies were lost. Eight children were injured in the strike on the hospital and four were killed elsewhere in Ukraine.
“I wasn’t afraid for myself, but for my child,” Shevchuk said, gesturing at Yasmina. “She didn’t really understand what was going on, and she didn’t cry, but she had difficulty breathing because of all the dust and she was coughing a lot.”
The situation deteriorated further when the smell of electronic burning began to fill the shelter, Shevchuk said. “Some kind of wiring was soldering, it seemed. It became really, really hard to breathe and the [medical] masks we had didn’t help much. The kids didn’t keep them on much, anyway.”
When they finally left the shelter, she saw the devastation at the rare genetic diseases centre where Yasmina had been receiving treatment. “This centre is our only hope. It’s the only one like this in Ukraine,” she said. “The ceiling had fallen down, everything was on the floor.”
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“There were nurses covered in blood, children covered in blood. I know all the doctors here: they are very attentive. The nurses look after these children like they are their own. We will continue to receive treatment here, of course: we have nowhere else to go.”
The Kremlin sought to deny that its forces had targeted the hospital, claiming that it was hit by a Ukrainian air-defence missile that had been provided by its western allies. However, the United Nations said there was a “high likelihood” that the missile had been fired from Russia.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Tuesday that it had recovered the wreckage of a Russian KH-101 cruise missile from the hospital grounds. It published several photographs of charred missile fragments, including parts of its engine casing that included inventory and serial numbers linking the missile to Moscow.
More than 1,700 Ukrainian healthcare facilities have been destroyed or damaged by Russia since the start of the war, according to the International Rescue Committee. There are now fears that Moscow will escalate its destruction of civilian infrastructure across Ukraine to demoralise the population, a tactic that the Russian military has previously carried out in Chechnya and Syria.
Back at the hospital in Kyiv, Shevchuk struggled to comprehend why she and her child had been forced to seek refuge from Russian missiles instead of receiving vital medical care. “We didn’t pose a threat to Russia. I don’t understand why they attacked us, why they attacked our city. It’s hard for me to get inside their heads.”
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The strikes came on the eve of a three-day Nato summit in Washington at which allies will seek to reassure Ukraine of their support. While western fears of being sucked into a direct conflict with Russia mean there is no prospect of Kyiv being offered Nato membership at the summit, a signal is expected to be sent through the alliance’s joint communiqué. A draft of the text describes Ukraine’s path to Nato as “irreversible”, according to reports by CNN.
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President Zelensky, who arrived in Washington for the summit on Tuesday, said he would seek additional assistance from Nato member states. “We are fighting for additional security guarantees for Ukraine — and these are weapons and finances, political support,” he said.
President Biden said that the missile attacks on Ukraine were “a horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality”. He promised that the United States would announce measures to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences. However, the White House said it would not drop its policy of forbidding Ukraine to use American missiles against military sites deep in Russia.
“There’s been no change in our policy. You saw the president several weeks ago gave guidance to Ukraine that they can use US-supplied weapons to strike targets just over the border,” John Kirby, the national security spokesman, said. “That’s still the case.”
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Sir Keir Starmer described the attack on the hospital as “depraved”, while David Lammy, the foreign secretary, called it “an appalling attack on Ukrainian civilians”. Starmer said Britain would continue to support Ukraine. The Pope voiced “grave sorrow” and expressed “deep distress” at the escalation of violence.
Russian opposition figures also condemned the attack. “A missile attack on a children’s hospital is a terrible crime that cannot even be imagined. And this is all happening right now, before our eyes. Putin and his regime are genuine cannibals,��� Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, said.
The attack coincided with the start of a two-day visit to Moscow by Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister. At talks with Putin, Modi did not directly address the strike on the hospital in Kyiv. However, he said: “When innocent children are murdered, [when] one sees them die, the heart pains and that pain is unbearable.”
Modi called Putin “a true friend” while simultaneously urging an end to the war. “I know that war cannot solve problems, solutions and peace talks can’t succeed among bombs, guns, and bullets,” he said.
