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KYIV, Ukraine — It is late afternoon. The Dnieper River flows past the café and restaurants on Trukhaniv Island, its sandy beaches a favorite destination for Kyiv residents looking for relief from the traffic and the hustle and bustle of city life. This is a typical day on Kyiv’s waterfront. A small group of children splash in the water, an antidote to the sweltering July heat. Passersby on the bridge connecting the island to Kyiv’s historic Podil district stroll leisurely in the sun.

In the shade of the bridge, on the beach not far from me, a group of teenagers have improvised a game of volleyball. There’s no net, but they manage anyway. Their father, Serhii, uses a newspaper to fan the hot coals of a small barbecue. Suddenly, a siren blares. Instinctively, anxious eyes turn skyward.

“A MiG just took off,” announces a young woman. Only moments ago, she was lounging on a beach towel. Now she is following the alert status on her mobile phone, using an app for the social media site Telegram. Her neighbor adds, “Ballistic missiles headed towards Kyiv.”

For almost two years, Kyiv was shielded by US anti-air defense systems, but delays in delivering aid caused by disputes in the US Congress have left the capital of Ukraine critically short of ammunition for its US-made Patriot missile-interceptor  system. Kyiv is suddenly much more vulnerable to Russian attacks.

July 8 marked the beginning of a new series of Russian attacks against Ukraine. The country’s air defense system managed to intercept 30 of 38 missiles fired. While that was impressive, it was not enough.

Instantly, the family abandons its make-shift volleyball game and everyone heads to the shelters. The barbecue is left to burn out on its own. “We’ll come back after the alert,” smiles Serhii.

On their way to the shelter, the wailing siren is matched by the roar of generators, a necessity that allows the city to maintain a semblance of normal life after Russian strikes knocked out most of Ukraine’s power plants. These days, Kyiv can usually count on the country’s electric power grid for only two hours a day.

A small crowd has already gathered at the entrance to the Metro, Kyiv’s subway system, which offers the nearest shelter. “At least it’s cool and safe down there,” jokes a woman in her fifties, as she hustles down the steps, wiping the sweat from her face with a small handkerchief.

At the bottom of the stairs, a waitress, still wearing her work apron, reads a book. Next to her, a policeman chats with a laborer, who is stripped to the waist and still holding his shovel. Everyone waits for the alert to end.

The sound of a missile exploding on a street above penetrates the Metro’s layers of concrete. By the time it reaches us, it has been attenuated to a dull thud. “It’s on the left bank,” a woman observes calmly. The rest of us remain silent. A few minutes later, a green notification lights up our phones. “The alert is over,” announces Serhii. “Shall we go back and finish our barbecue and have some shashlik?”

Like Hitler’s assault on London in the Battle of Britain — the German attempt to bomb the British into submission during World War II — Vladimir Putin’s missile attacks against Ukraine have become a daily routine. Unless you are directly impacted by a missile, life goes on the moment the alert is over. 

The devastating exception was the Russian missile that targeted Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s most important hospital for small children in central Kyiv, on July 8. The heartless destruction which Putin directed against innocent children in that attack is still stuck in everyone’s memory. 

Minutes before Russian cruise missiles hit the Okhmatdyt hospital, six-year-old Sonia and her mother were walking in the adjacent park. When the first alarm sounded, they rushed home. “We saw that ballistic missiles were heading towards Kyiv,” Sonia’s mother explains. “We live just a hundred meters away, so we went to shelter in the bathroom of our apartment.” 

When the missile hit the hospital, the explosion was so loud they thought that the missile had hit their building. “All the windows in our apartment were blown out,” Sonia’s mother says. “Sonia was wounded,” her mother says, showing a small cut on her daughter’s head.

July 8 marked the beginning of a new series of Russian attacks against Ukraine. The country’s air defense system managed to intercept 30 of 38 missiles fired. While that was impressive, it was not enough. Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) issued a preliminary report concluding that the children’s hospital had been destroyed by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. Several other sites in the capital were also struck by missiles.

Two days later, authorities reported that 33 people across Kyiv had been killed by the missile attack and more than 200 injured. It was the deadliest raid on the capital since December 29.

Saving Lives

Amid the rubble, dozens of firefighters, escorted by volunteers, made their way through the smoke. The ground under their feet crackled with glass, glistening in the July heat.

Two firefighters on the ground were assisting a woman in her fifties. She had lost consciousness and was lying on a stretcher.

“Turn it tighter,” shouted one firefighter, using all his strength to twist a tourniquet on a half-severed leg. “Tighter!”

Nearby, Nikita, 19, wiped sweat mixed with dust from his face. Among the first responders to immediately arrive on the scene, he had been working in a garage a hundred yards away when the missiles hit. “At first I thought it had hit the garage. Then I realized it was the children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt.”

“There was smoke everywhere. We went inside [the hospital] and started helping the first injured. Then I saw a drone flying and exploding in a building a little bit further away.”

Nurses, covered in dust, sweat, and blood, carried frightened children in their arms. Other patients, emaciated by cancer, were escorted by a swarm of volunteers to various hospitals around the city.

In a garden facing the hospital, a doctor was crying on the phone. Her face bruised, she wore a blood-soaked bandage wound around her head like a turban. Struggling to find her words, she said, “These are children; why are they attacking children?”

Nikita, his eyes wide with shock, said, “I saw a girl; both her legs were severed. She was taken away by the rescuers. They [the firefighters] said she would live.” Tears in his eyes, he wiped his face. “Today is my birthday,” he added before putting on a pair of gloves. “I planned to celebrate it tonight with my friends.”

No one who witnessed the July 8 attack on the children’s hospital will ever forget the soul-searing scenes of devastation. Since then, the missiles have continued to strike randomly at different parts of Kyiv. Yet most of the city’s residents treat the continuing Russian attacks in the manner of Serhii, the father of the teenagers playing volleyball on July 8. Once the alert was over, he decided to get on with his picnic. This unbowed determination to hold onto normal life  is one line of defense that Ukrainian civilians can muster in the face of the continuing Russian missile assault.

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