Cruise missile attack leaves 25 dead, including 3 children, in a city that is only beginning to comprehend the tragedy
VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — A pink teddy bear smiles up at the summer sun, a yellow ribbon tied around its neck.
Next to it lies a brown bear, and beyond it, dozens more stuffed animals, a pile of lifeless smiles on a sidewalk caked in ash. Shards of glass scattered across the pavement glint like jagged stars against a black sky.
“It’s a child’s body that is bruised/ It’s a mother’s tears, who while still alive/Saw the city after a fight,” reads a poem left on the heap of toys, a makeshift memorial for children killed in a Russian strike.
Only days before, a Russian submarine in the Black Sea launched five Kalibr cruise missiles at Vinnytsia, a city of 370,000 in central Ukraine, southwest of Kyiv.
Two of the precision missiles were intercepted, according to Ukrainian officials.
But three made it through.
At 10:42 a.m., as government officials from nearly 40 countries were meeting in The Hague to discuss efforts to investigate and prosecute Russian war crimes, one of the Russian missiles slammed into a Vinnytsia street next to a nine-story shopping center. Another missile hit a building belonging to Ukraine’s air force, which the Russians said was the target of the strike. They claimed air force officers were meeting foreign arms suppliers at the time.
Ukraine says the building was a cultural center for retired officers, and President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack “an open act of terrorism” against civilians in locations without military value.
“I was at home after work,” recounted Vitaly, a soldier guarding the shopping center. “There was an explosion, breaking windows.”
Security camera footage of the blast shows pedestrians and cyclists being flung to the ground as pieces of the buildings rained down around them. As panicked dogs race around their owners, a black shadow spreads ominously over the fleeing passersby.
At least 25 people, including three children, were killed in the attack last Thursday, hundreds of kilometers from the capital or from the front lines.
Liza, a 4-year-old girl with Down syndrome, was en route to see a speech therapist with her mother, Iryna. After the Russian missile strike, Ukraine’s emergency services shared photos showing her lifeless body on the ground next to her blood-stained stroller.
Iryna is still in the hospital.
Ukrainian pop star Roxolana was on a charity tour of Ukraine last week, slated to perform in Vinnytsia that night. Two of her sound engineers, Eugene Kovalenko and Andrii Moroz, were enjoying a morning off in the city center before the concert that evening.
Kovalenko, 25, was killed in the attack. Moroz is in a hospital fighting for his life.
У Вінниці загинув мій добрий знайомий та колега, звукорежисер гуртів Roxolana, OLEYNIK, Tokyo – Євгеній Коваленко. Він прогулювався центром міста, а ввечері мав бути благочинний концерт. Ще двоє колег у важкому стані у лікарні, борються за життя. #russiaisaterrorisstate pic.twitter.com/eMrlZJY7Td
— SoundMan (@SoundmanUA) July 14, 2022
Six days later, the site still feels very much like the aftermath of a missile strike. Both the air force building and the shopping center are burnt-out husks, with small groups of soldiers guarding the approaches. One of the troops flies a red drone over the site, as construction workers hammer a fence of corrugated metal into place.
An old woman and two teenagers approach the improvised children’s memorial, accompanied by two soldiers. They observe the stuffed animals, and the woman, choking back tears, tosses a flower onto the pile.
When asked if she would like to share her story, she waves her hand furiously and hurries away.
Death after a funeral
The extent of the damage to the air force center isn’t immediately apparent from its facade, but from the back, it looks like a skeleton. The second floor of one of the building’s wings is shorn off, and the interior of the building is covered in debris from shattered windows and collapsed roofs. What were once leafy trees behind the building are now jagged stumps.
Next door, scaffolding covers St. George the Victorious Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Archpriest Valerii Shvets had been conducting a funeral service in the church that Thursday for a parishioner who had recently passed away. After the final song, the hearse and the mourners left the church grounds, and Shvets stayed behind.
“There was a massive explosion with a huge blast,” Shvets told The Times of Israel. “I thought it was an electric explosion, I couldn’t believe a rocket would hit here. I saw a really bright flash, and then the ceiling started falling down. All the windows and all the doors were blasted apart.”
A video posted by Shvets’s son, who injured his hand, shows the immediate aftermath of the strike. Two women stand amid the flaming debris in the yard, watching as the black column of smoke grows larger. Still wearing his rainments from the service, the priest runs out of the building.
The church, which was under construction, escaped serious damage. None of the icons in the church suffered any scratches.
Still, two spires were hit, and only three windows remained intact out of 39. The small church school will need to be totally rebuilt.
While no one died on the church grounds itself, two of the mourners were in their car twenty meters from the church driveway when the missiles rained down.
“They visited their friend to say goodbye, and now they are dead,” lamented Shvets.
“I’m in shock,” he continued, “and I don’t even know what to do or where to start at the moment.”
Churchgoers come by every day to carry out wreckage, to clean, to help in any way they can.
“We’ve been working so hard on creating this community,” said Shvets. “This community around the church is the greatest power right now, the community of people that is supporting me.”
Nearby, locals continue to walk slowly by the site, leaving more toys and flowers at the memorial.
“Vinnytsia is crying, dreaming of peace,” reads the poem. “Vinnytsia is crying, asking for help.”
As reported by The Times of Israel