Slaughter of the innocents

April 2023, apartment block in Uman

The Russian military launched a strike on Uman, a city in central Ukraine’s Cherkasy region, on 28 April. One missile hit a nine-storey residential building, killing 23 people, including six children. Around 20 others were injured. The building, which was inhabited by 109 people, caught fire, destroying 27 apartments.

January 2023, residential building in Dnipro

On 14 January, the Russian military launched a missile strike on a nine-storey residential building in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine. The attack killed 46 people, including six children.

Anastasia Shvets, 23, was trapped on the seventh floor of the destroyed building but survived. Her boyfriend died several months prior to the attack. “I don’t know where my parents are. They say they were seen alive but I am sure they were in the kitchen that is no longer there,” she wrote on social media. It later became known that her parents and her pet cat had indeed been killed in the attack.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the building had been damaged by Ukrainian air defences. The Russian Defence Ministry claimed that the missile strike on 14 January “targeted Ukraine’s military command system and the energy facilities linked to it”.

July 2022, residential building in Chasiv Yar

The Russian military launched a missile strike on two residential buildings in the town of Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk region, on the evening of 9 July 2022.

One five-storey dormitory was partially destroyed in the attack, while another five-storey building was seriously damaged. In total, 48 people were killed, including a child.

The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed the strike, saying that “a temporary deployment site for Ukraine’s 118th territorial defence brigade” had been destroyed in Chasiv Yar, killing “300 nationalists”.

The New York Times reported on 10 July that Ukrainian service members had been placed in the dormitory two days prior to the attack. At the moment of the strike, at least 10 civilians were residing in the building, primarily elderly women.

July 2022, downtown Vinnytsia

On the morning of 14 July, the Russian military launched a missile strike on downtown Vinnytsia, central Ukraine, killing 27 people.

Prior to the attack, Vinnytsia was considered one of the safest Ukrainian cities and had welcomed refugees from all over the country.

A four-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome, who had moved with her mother to Vinnytsia from Kyiv for safety reasons, was among those killed. On the day of the strike, they had been travelling to a centre for children with special needs when the Russian missile struck.

The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed it had launched the strike, saying that the military targeted a “temporary Nazi deployment site” that it alleged had been set up in the centre of the city.

June 2022, mall in Kremenchuk

The Russian military launched a missile strike on a mall in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine’s Poltava region on 27 June 2022, killing 21 people and injuring 60 more.

One missile landed next to the mall, while another one hit a nearby factory. The strike caused a fire and the collapse of the mall’s roof.

The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed it had launched a “high-precision weapon” strike on Kremenchuk, denying however that the mall had been struck. The ministry said that the strike had targeted Ukrainian warehouses it said had been used to store Western-produced military equipment.

April 2022, Kramatorsk train station

On 8 April 2022, the Russian military launched a missile strike on a busy railway station in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, where at least 500 people were awaiting evacuation.

The attack left 61 people dead, including seven children. The missile was reportedly inscribed with “to avenge the children”.

The Russian Defence Ministry later said that the Russian military had “no operational tasks” in Kramatorsk on 8 April, and blamed the tragedy on a “rocket division of the Ukrainian armed forces”.

March 2022, Mariupol Drama Theatre

On 16 March 2022, the Russian military launched airstrikes on the Mariupol Drama Theatre in the Donetsk region, where anywhere between 600 and 1,300 civilians were sheltering at the time.

The exact number of people killed in the attack is still unknown. While the Mariupol administration said that around 300 people had lost their lives, an investigation by the Associated Press determined that as many as 600 civilians could have been killed..

Amnesty International reported that aerial bombs dropped through the roof of the theatre and detonated in the auditorium, causing the support structure of the roof to collapse.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that the theatre had not been a target due to the fact that hostages could have been inside of it. The ministry accused Ukraine’s Azov Brigade of planting bombs inside of the building and detonating them.