Deadly Russian missile attack hits children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, Zelensky vows retaliation

Russia rained missiles on cities across Ukraine in broad daylight on Monday morning, killing at least 29 civilians and severely damaging Kyiv’s main children’s hospital, officials said, in the deadliest airstrike in months.

Hundreds of people rushed to clear the rubble of the hospital, whose windows had been smashed and panels torn off. Parents holding their babies milled around the street outside, dazed and sobbing after the rare daylight air raid.

“It was scary. I couldn’t breathe and I tried to cover (my baby). I tried to cover him with this cloth so he could breathe,” 33-year-old Svitlana Kravchenko told Reuters.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia fired more than 40 missiles, damaging residential and commercial buildings and infrastructure in Kyiv, his hometown of Kryvyi Rih, the central Russian city of Dnipro and two cities in the east of the country.

The main wave of attacks on Kyiv killed 10 people and injured 35, authorities said. About two hours later, debris from another rocket attack hit another hospital in Kyiv, killing four more people and injuring three others, emergency services said.

Eleven deaths and over 40 injuries were confirmed in Kryvyi Rih, emergency services said. Three people were killed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk when rockets hit an industrial plant, the region’s governor said. One person was also killed in the city of Dnipro, officials said.

“The whole world must act as decisively as possible to put an end to Russian air strikes. Murder – that is what Putin brings. Only together can we achieve true peace and security,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its armed forces had carried out attacks on defense industry targets and air bases in Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly denied carrying out attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, although thousands of civilians have been killed in the attacks since the large-scale invasion began in February 2022.

The attack came one day before the scheduled start of a three-day summit of NATO countries, which Zelensky is expected to attend and where the war in Ukraine will be one of the main focuses.

“This callous aggression – a complete disregard for human life and a threat to European and transatlantic security – is why Ukraine’s leaders will make significant security commitments this week,” U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv Bridget Brink wrote on X.

Plea for the defense

Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said Ukraine still lacks adequate air defense systems and called on Kyiv’s allies to immediately deploy more systems to help protect the country’s cities and infrastructure from regular Russian air strikes.

The power grid has been so badly damaged by targeted Russian air strikes since March that there are widespread power outages and the hum of emergency generators is omnipresent in the streets.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power producer, said three substations and power grids in the capital were damaged.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko described the attack on the capital as one of the largest of the war.

“We heard an explosion, then we were showered with debris,” Svitlana told Reuters after she and her husband Viktor emerged from a hospital shelter with their two-month-old baby.

The baby was unharmed, but Svitlana had suffered cuts and her car was completely buried under the rubble of the destroyed building across the courtyard from the main station.

More than an hour after the attack, another explosion rang out over the city, while the air force issued a warning to residents that air defenses could attack Russian surveillance drones in the area.