The Russian bombing of a children’s hospital in Ukraine shows the costs of improved war tactics

July 10, 2024

The sky was crystal clear when Oksana Femeniuk took her daughter to Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital for routine dialysis.

At around 10 a.m. the air raid sirens sounded. 16-year-old Solomiia was undergoing a treatment during which she had to sit still for up to five hours and was not allowed to be disturbed. Her mother had to flee to the hospital basement without her.

A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile was hurtling toward them at 700-800 kilometers per hour, according to Ukrainian intelligence, the United Nations and open-source investigators. Through painstaking trial and error, Russia modified the weapon last year so that it could overcome Ukrainian air defense systems by flying at low altitude and close to the terrain, military analysts say.

Minutes later, the world went black. Neither the patient nor her mother can remember the moment the missile hit. But they do remember the chaos that erupted after she regained consciousness: Femeniuk thought she was suffocating from the fumes. Solomiia woke up to find that the blanket had collapsed over her small body.

In an operating room in the neighboring building, pediatric surgeon Oleh Holubchenko was preparing to operate on an infant with a congenital facial defect. Covered in shrapnel wounds, he realized that the blast wave had catapulted him to the other side of the operating room.

The outcome of Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in nearly four months – one of the deadliest of the entire war – shows the devastating human cost of Russia’s improved targeting tactics.

The hospital’s general director, Volodymyr Zhovnir, stood at the site of the explosion, hidden behind the tall building with its broken windows. Thank God no children died, he said, but they lost a dear colleague, Dr. Svitlana Lukianchuk.

Lukianchuk rushed the children and parents out of the toxicology building, which was later to be destroyed, to the shelter. She returned to clear out more rooms. And then the explosion, Femeniuk remembers.

Solomiia was born with chronic kidney failure and was therefore dependent on hemodialysis for her life.

After the large-scale invasion, Femeniuk left her three children and her husband in the small village near Rivne in western Ukraine to live in the capital so that the girl could receive the necessary treatment.

Leaving her daughter behind during the air raid was a difficult decision. But the 34-year-old mother had to radiate strength, she said. Her daughter remained brave, knowing that she could not interrupt her treatment. Femeniuk could not tell her daughter that she was actually very scared.

While the air raid siren blared, the girl watched videos on her cell phone. Given how long dialysis takes, she quickly gets bored.

When she woke up, she saw the blanket in front of her eyes and the head doctor who was taking care of her, covered in blood and on her knees.

The girl’s first impulse was to raise her hands to the ceiling so that tons of concrete and rubble would not crush her small body. She was trapped with several other patients and hospital staff and was pulled safely from the rubble.

“The first thing I thought about was my mother, whether she was still alive or not. Then I thought, ‘Am I still alive or not?'” she said, her fingers painted with small flowers and fidgety as she spoke. Mother and daughter recounted their experiences at the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital, where Solomiia was transferred.

In the shelter, the exit was blocked and the fire blazing outside soon penetrated the small room. Femeniuk called her husband and told him that she did not know if she would survive and whether Solomiia was still alive.

Eventually, the refugees managed to make their way out. To their horror, they discovered that the very building where she and some of her children had been had been hit. In a panic, Femeniuk began to pick up debris and called her daughter’s name. Then she saw the nurse who had helped them covered in blood.

Solomiia was evacuated after the explosion, the nurse said. She is safe.

In the operating room, it took Holubchenko fifteen minutes to realize he was covered in shrapnel wounds. The doctor was too busy evacuating patients, starting with the five-month-old baby, whose operation was eventually completed elsewhere.

“My colleagues and I who were in the operating room suffered shrapnel injuries to our bodies, faces, backs, arms and legs,” he said. “In the operating room there are glass windows, the doors. Everything was simply blown away, everything was destroyed.”

In the hospital room he looked out of a broken window onto the street.

“There used to be a wall here,” he said.

When he went outside and saw that the toxicology building had collapsed, he thought back to the days when he had consulted patients and performed tests there. Now half the building had collapsed.

But he did not ponder this thought for long, and instead joined a number of volunteers, health workers and rescue workers who were clearing away the rubble piece by piece.

“Everyone wanted to do something,” he said.

The attack hit seven of the city’s ten districts. The attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, which was treating 627 children at the time, aroused the anger of Ukrainian authorities and the international community. Two adults were killed, including a doctor, and 50 were injured.

Russia denied responsibility for the hospital attack and insisted it does not attack civilian targets in Ukraine, despite ample evidence to support this, including AP reports. Moscow insisted the hospital was hit by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.

Artem Starosiek, founder of the Ukrainian group Molfar, which analyzes events based on open-source evidence, said there was overwhelming evidence of Russia’s guilt. The missile used in the attack bore the characteristics of the Kh-101, he said, pointing to the shape of the fuselage, tail and location of the wings.

The fact that it was a clear day also played an important role, he said. Launching the modified missile on a sunny day was optimal so that the weapon’s optoelectronic system could correctly identify the target, he said.

“The force of the warhead explosion is important; an anti-aircraft missile could not have caused such consequences,” he said.