Posted on Jul 12, 2022
Russian missiles are blasting civilians in Ukraine
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https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/ [login to see] /russia-ukraine-civilian-casualties-kremenchuk-mall
It was a hot summer afternoon in this city in central Ukraine, the kind of day Ukrainians dream of in the depths of winter. Young women pulled out flowery sundresses. Teenagers in cut-off jeans made plans to gather at the mall. Families rode bikes along the sidewalk.
Ihor Mykhaylov and his wife were waiting for a bus in front of the Amstor shopping mall. "We decided to go into the mall to buy some water," Mykhaylov says.
Minutes later, a nearly 40-foot-long, Soviet-era missile crashed into the complex. Mykhaylov's wife and 20 other people were killed. That was June 27, and the Amstor Mall joined more than two dozen other shopping centers that Russian forces have destroyed in more than four months of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"When I woke up, I realized I'd lost my arm," Mykhaylov says about regaining consciousness on the floor of the mall. Propped up in a hospital bed, his right arm is amputated just below the elbow. His other arm is wrapped in gauze, from fingertips to shoulder. Cuts and bruises mark his face and chest. He remembers fire was spreading through the mall.
It was a hot summer afternoon in this city in central Ukraine, the kind of day Ukrainians dream of in the depths of winter. Young women pulled out flowery sundresses. Teenagers in cut-off jeans made plans to gather at the mall. Families rode bikes along the sidewalk.
Ihor Mykhaylov and his wife were waiting for a bus in front of the Amstor shopping mall. "We decided to go into the mall to buy some water," Mykhaylov says.
Minutes later, a nearly 40-foot-long, Soviet-era missile crashed into the complex. Mykhaylov's wife and 20 other people were killed. That was June 27, and the Amstor Mall joined more than two dozen other shopping centers that Russian forces have destroyed in more than four months of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"When I woke up, I realized I'd lost my arm," Mykhaylov says about regaining consciousness on the floor of the mall. Propped up in a hospital bed, his right arm is amputated just below the elbow. His other arm is wrapped in gauze, from fingertips to shoulder. Cuts and bruises mark his face and chest. He remembers fire was spreading through the mall.
Russian missiles are blasting civilians in Ukraine
Posted from npr.org
Ukraine
Russia
Weapons
Posted 2 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."United Nations human rights experts have counted almost 5,000 civilians killed and more than 6,000 injured since the start of the war in February.
Just days after the airstrike on the mall in Kremenchuk, Russian missiles killed 21 people at an apartment building and a recreation center in a coastal resort near Odesa. A few days later, in the town of Chasiv Yar, in the eastern Donetsk region, Russian artillery brought down a residential building, killing at least 30 civilians.
Even if these recent strikes on civilians were accidents, Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of the Center for Civil Liberties Ukraine, says they are war crimes. It doesn't matter, she says even if President Vladimir Putin and Russian military commanders claim they were aiming for military targets.
"You have always to evaluate the possible damage for civilians even when you try to hit a military object," she says. Russia routinely isn't doing that evaluation, she adds.
And she says this is not new for the Russian military.
"They've enjoyed impunity for decades," she says. "They committed the same [attacks on civilians] in Georgia and Moldova, in Syria, in Mali, in Libya. They really think that they can do whatever they want and they can say whatever they want."
Hodges, the former Army commander, says he expects Russian strikes on civilians to continue. These attacks may even increase, he says, as military leaders in Moscow face dogged Ukrainian resistance on the front lines and the Kremlin grows more frustrated with what it had expected to be a quick war."
..."United Nations human rights experts have counted almost 5,000 civilians killed and more than 6,000 injured since the start of the war in February.
Just days after the airstrike on the mall in Kremenchuk, Russian missiles killed 21 people at an apartment building and a recreation center in a coastal resort near Odesa. A few days later, in the town of Chasiv Yar, in the eastern Donetsk region, Russian artillery brought down a residential building, killing at least 30 civilians.
Even if these recent strikes on civilians were accidents, Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of the Center for Civil Liberties Ukraine, says they are war crimes. It doesn't matter, she says even if President Vladimir Putin and Russian military commanders claim they were aiming for military targets.
"You have always to evaluate the possible damage for civilians even when you try to hit a military object," she says. Russia routinely isn't doing that evaluation, she adds.
And she says this is not new for the Russian military.
"They've enjoyed impunity for decades," she says. "They committed the same [attacks on civilians] in Georgia and Moldova, in Syria, in Mali, in Libya. They really think that they can do whatever they want and they can say whatever they want."
Hodges, the former Army commander, says he expects Russian strikes on civilians to continue. These attacks may even increase, he says, as military leaders in Moscow face dogged Ukrainian resistance on the front lines and the Kremlin grows more frustrated with what it had expected to be a quick war."
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