The Russians Blew Up a Children's Hospital in Kyiv

Usually I have to go to the front to see these sort of horrors. Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital is walking distance from my house.

The explosions woke me up. I counted three in a row.

I went to the window. Our view of the city center was unmarred, but looking south out of the laundry room showed smoke - lots of it and close.

In a typical air raid, you hear sirens and nothing else. Most are false alarms. The authorities sound the alarm when any plane capable of delivering a missile takes off in Russia. Sometimes you hear sirens then a few explosions from Patriot missiles taking down Russian cruise missiles.

This is one of the few times the explosions kept coming. Anna was out running errands, saw the missile drop from the sky and snapped the photo below.

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She called me and asked what I saw. At this point we were unsure of what was hit. Our colleague Svitlana, who lives very near to the the rising plume of smoke, told us she thought it was Okhmatdyt Children’s hospital. Svitlana’s ears were clogged and ringing from the blast.

On the left, Okhmatdyt hospital prior to the war. On the right, Okhmatdyt hospital this morning when I walked up to it.

As we walked up to the strike site, we still weren’t sure of the target until we saw a mother running with a child in her arms, tubes hanging from his nose. A five year old boy whose hand was bandaged had a tube hanging from his arm. I told him in Ukrainian he was brave and gave him a Ukraine Freedom Project patch.

These children had been injured once by the Russians. Putin was now trying to finish them off.

The building that was hit was a children's surgical center. It was across from the main hospital and shrapnel from the blast took out many hospital rooms. On the left is the building prior to the war. On the right, as I saw it this morning.

The west side of the main building was almost completely intact, modern and colorful. <Click here for a video of what I saw when I walked up.> When we rounded the corner, we saw every other building in the compound was devoid of windows. I had flashbacks from 9/11 as hundreds of Ukrainians were pitching in to dig people out of the rubble.

I ran into one of our chaplain friends, Mark Sergeev. Mark survived torture at the hands of the Russians in Melitopol. He had just returned from the front and, seeing the smoke, came to the hospital to help. His son had broken his arm a few months back and was treated at this hospital. Mark told me that the building that was hit had been a surgical center. The blast and the shrapnel took out perhaps a hundred hospital rooms in the building facing the surgical center.

I was there for about 15 minutes when the sirens sounded again. The rescuers began to evacuate - forced to leave children underneath the rubble - because the Russians have adopted the ISIS tactic of bombing a place then bombing it again to kill the rescuers.

The explosions minutes later gave urgency to the evacuation. <click here for video>

When I left, the cat and mouse game the Russians were playing with the rescuers was still going on.

This is one of three hospitals the Russians hit today in Ukraine, and one of three children’s hospitals I have seen attacked by the Russians. This one by far the worst.

Okhmatdyt is an abbreviation for “protection of motherhood and childhood.” The second hospital the Russians hit in Kyiv is a fertility clinic. July 8 is family day in Ukraine.

The message is genocide.

Maybe Jake Sullivan will receive the message. Many of these strikes are launched from inside Russia inside the range of US weapons. Some could be prevented should Sullivan allow pre-emptive strikes inside by the Ukrainians.

Sullivan is a lawyer. Pretty sure they don’t offer military strategy classes at Yale Law School. Lawyers are trained to mitigate risk, which does not win wars. Nor save children.

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The Ukraine Freedom Project is a 501c3 and we run on tax deductible donations. We give firsthand, data-driven information about Ukraine to members of Congress and opinion leaders in DC. If you want to see us continue this work, please donate here.

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