Anger against Russia rages as Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital is hit | News on the Russia-Ukraine war

Kyiv, Ukraine – On Monday morning, huge explosions shook Oleksandra’s house, sending dagger-like shards of glass flying through the air.

Hours later, she is still shaking, but it wasn’t the damage to her two-bedroom apartment that shocked her.

“We can still get the windows replaced,” she told Al Jazeera, holding a cigarette and sitting next to her elderly father on a bench near the building in central Kyiv.

It was the damage done to Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, a sprawling complex located just meters from her apartment.

Every year, thousands of children are treated in this hospital, including those with cancer.

A Russian hypersonic missile hit the complex on Monday morning, specifically a two-story toxicology unit where children undergo dialysis, officials said.

The roof of the building collapsed, killing at least two hospital employees. One of the victims was said to be a doctor. At least 16 people were injured, including seven children, authorities said.

“I am so depressed,” Oleksandra said, pointing to the hospital, which was still surrounded by a cloud of dust as bulldozers cleared away the rubble.

“That’s where they rescued my son two years ago and now I see this,” she said as dozens of volunteers milled around, distributing water bottles, food and fruit to the children from pickup trucks and buses.

“They are children, very small children. We see them every day. Some have cancer,” she said.

The attack on the hospital was part of a Russian barrage.

Moscow has fired three dozen missiles at several Ukrainian cities. At the time of writing, at least 36 people have been killed and 125 injured, but the death toll is likely to rise.

“Some children are still trapped under the rubble,” a rescue worker told Al Jazeera four hours after the impact.

But a police officer signaled him to stop talking and told the reporter: “Everyone is alive and well. Please stay away.”

Russia denies responsibility

Russia regularly denies attacking civilian infrastructure. It claimed the hospital was hit by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.

“The statements of the regime in Kiev about an alleged targeted missile attack by Russia on civilian objects are absolutely unrealistic,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“Several photos and video footage from Kyiv confirm beyond doubt the fact of destruction caused by the crash of a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile fired within the city limits,” it said.

However, military analysts are convinced that the attack on Ochmatdyt was deliberate.

They used the “full spectrum” of missiles, supported by Iranian-made Shaheed drones, and “struck during the day to exert moral and psychological pressure,” said Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“They attacked Ochmatdyt to hit a sore spot so that Ukrainians and Kyiv people would become emotional and put pressure on their” leaders to agree to a plan proposed by the Kremlin that would force Ukraine to recognize the Moscow-occupied parts of Ukraine and Crimea as parts of Russia, he told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainians who have witnessed years of bombing agree that the attack was not a mistake.

“These were hits, not mid-air collisions” with anti-aircraft missiles, said Serhiy, a civil engineer who observed hits at the Artyom military facility, about a kilometer from Okhmatdyt Hospital.

“The distances between them were the same – one, two, three, four. I have seen and heard enough of this,” Serhiy told Al Jazeera. He is from the eastern Syrian city of Donetsk, which was captured by separatists in 2014.

Like many Ukrainians, he is used to strikes and war in general.

“I have no feelings anymore,” he said.

He said he was unable to attend his mother’s funeral in Donetsk last year because a trip to the separatist-held city would have been a “one-way ticket” for him.

The Artyom plant once produced missiles and other weapons for the Ukrainian Air Force.

Since the large-scale Russian invasion began in 2022, the company has been attacked several times, even though most of the production has been relocated and only a handful of employees work in the building.

“I should have run away,” one of them told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, sitting in the shade of an Orthodox chapel across the street from the plant.

“Everything was flying around – sketches, papers, things,” he said, pointing to the building where firefighters were putting out a blaze that sent up two huge black clouds of smoke that could be seen across Kyiv.

He said at least one of his colleagues was killed.

Russia’s missiles are “more difficult to identify and destroy”

Minutes later, a second air raid alarm drove rescue workers, police officers and civilians to an underground passage.

Although modern Western air defense systems protect Kyiv from most Russian missiles and drones, Moscow is “constantly improving” its bombing tactics, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said.

Russia’s missiles are “harder to identify and destroy,” Yuri Ihnat wrote on Facebook.

He said the missiles flew at a “super-low altitude” of just 50 meters (165 feet) above the ground on Monday to avoid detection and interception.

For many in Ukraine, the bombing of hospitals is a symbol of Russia’s cruelty. Throughout the war, which is now in its third year, civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals, train stations and bomb shelters have been hit.

“We must hold Russia accountable for its terrorist acts and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin accountable for ordering the attacks,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X.

“Every time there are attempts to negotiate peace with (Putin), Russia responds with attacks on homes and hospitals,” he said, adding that Kyiv had called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the bombing.