What I saw at the Okhmatdyt bomb site

Kyiv

00:00 06:14

Svitlana Morenets has narrated this article for you to listen to.

For weeks, Kyiv had felt relatively safe compared with just about everywhere else in Ukraine. People had adjusted to wartime life as the city’s air defences managed to intercept most of Russia’s missiles and drones. There had been a sense that things were improving. This was shattered on Monday morning when a missile struck a children’s cancer hospital in the capital.

Okhmatdyt is the largest paediatric clinic in Ukraine, the equivalent of London’s Great Ormond Street. Each year, it treats more than 20,000 children with the most serious health conditions. That Russia had targeted it came as a shock but not a surprise: some 1,700 medical facilities in Ukraine have been hit since the start of the full-scale invasion. In April, Ivan Tertel, head of the Belarusian KGB, claimed that ‘terrorists are hiding in Kyiv hospitals’ – language intended to justify the strikes. When air-raid sirens sounded, children in Okhmatdyt were taken to basements not in case they became collateral damage, but because they might be the target.

Outside the collapsed ward, children who had been bedridden were sitting on their mothers’ knees

Okhmatdyt was one of three Ukrainian medical institutions to be hit in the attacks on Monday: two in Kyiv and one in Dnipro. It was struck by a £10 million Kh-101 cruise missile which is designed to better penetrate air defences. News of the attack spread quickly. I was staying a short distance away, and called a taxi. We were soon stuck in traffic because so many people were rushing to the hospital to try to help.

Ukrainians are aware that Russia’s tactic is often to follow up a first strike with another that is aimed at killing first responders – but if people are trapped under rubble, there is only a short period of time in which to rescue them.