Hospital Attack Continues Russia’s War on Children
Rather than undermining Ukrainians’ resolve, such attacks convince them that there is no other option but to continue fighting.
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The bombing of Ukraine’s primary national children’s hospital in Kyiv this week highlights Russia’s use of war crimes as a central method of conducting its invasion.
Taking place on the eve of the NATO summit, the carnage at Ohmatdyt only sharpened the question facing Kyiv’s allies: Do they have the will and capacity to support Ukraine to win, or are Russia’s resources and cruelty inexorable?
Hundreds of civilians immediately gathered at the destroyed facility in Kyiv to form human chains to remove the rubble, brick by brick. Medical staff sought to re-establish care for the young patients, many undergoing urgent, life-saving treatment. Three operations were under way at the time of the strike.
Yet by the next day, the frontline of the issue had shifted to New York, at an emergency session of the UN Security Council.
“Striking a children's hospital,” hospital director Volodymyr Zhovnire told the meeting, “is not just a war crime, it is far beyond the limits of humanity.”
With Russia heading the council, it fell to Moscow’s UN Ambassador, Vassily Nebanzia, both to chair the debate and to try to rebut members’ harsh criticism with a blunt denial.
“The truth does not interest our western colleagues,” he insisted. “From analysis of photos and videos of what happened, it clearly follows that this was a missile of the Ukrainian air defence.”
Yet in validating citizen video posted online of the hurtling projectile, this quick rebuttal backfired. Numerous forensic arms experts responded on media and social media confirming the projectile’s identity as a KH-101, a low-flying Russian cruise missile designed to avoid air defences. The Ukrainian open-source information group Molfar published a list of 28 Russian pilots and commanders it said were responsible for the attack.
Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya showed a slide outlining the curving flight path of the missile, and photographs from the site of the missile remnants.
“The chairman’s seat is soaked in blood,” he said, dropping any diplomatic tones. “How many more Russian crimes will it take for the issue of the presence of the dictatorial Kremlin regime in the Soviet permanent seat to be addressed?”
No matter how routine tragedy has become in Ukraine, the human cost always matters. Ohmatdyt is the country’s main facility for children’s care, receiving patients from across the country, so the strike will have a long-term impact as wards and equipment have been rendered unusable.
And it was not the only attack on July 8, with strikes recorded elsewhere in Kyiv (including a maternity hospital), as well as in Dnipro, Kramatorsk and several other towns, reaching a death toll of at least 47, with more than 190 injured.
The strikes also highlight Ukraine’s continued urgency for arms, particularly air defence. Further Patriot and other systems are required, and this is not a static matter, as Russia continues to probe for weaknesses and ways to circumvent Ukrainian air defences. So upgrading and innovating systems are constant and essential.
NATO and the Western powers have responded with further pledges, for continuing military aid and eventual NATO membership. Yet, as the farrago over the US military aid package this spring demonstrated, delays cost Ukrainian lives, and there remains a fatal gap between aid promises and arms deliveries.
The fundamental question remains: to provide enough arms for Ukraine to survive, or to win?
Above all, the July 8 attacks highlight Russia’s normalisation of the use of war crimes as a central component of military strategy. Medical facilities are accorded special protection under the laws of war. Since President Vladimir Putin explicitly denies the validity of Ukrainian nationality, the consistent attacks on the next generation are especially concerning. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin and his Commissioner for Children Maria Lvova-Belova, for abducting children and taking them to Russia.
As UK Ambassador Dame Barabara Woodward noted at the UN, “Since February 2022, in repeated attacks on Ukraine, Russia has killed Ukrainian children, Russia has maimed and injured Ukrainian children, Russia has abducted Ukrainian children. Yesterday Russia came back for wounded and sick children.”
The shelling of the children’s hospital is the first major attack in Kyiv in many months, heightening fear in a capital city with a day-to-day urban buzz that belies the realities of war. Yet rather than undermine Ukrainians’ resolve, such attacks - which also include continuing degradation of the electricity grid - convince them that they cannot survive Russian occupation, so there is no other option but to continue fighting.
“The bombing makes people blame Russia even more, and no one believes in any kind of peace processes,” said Anna Nazaryk of the Kyiv-based human rights group Centre for Civil Liberties. “But there is no idea that people are tired. They know what is at stake, it is the lives of Ukrainian people. From all this, we know what will happen if Russia comes.
