Another 24 people – three of them children – paid the ultimate price for the Kremlin’s tragic new strategy. The Russian military was too weak, ill-trained and ill-cooked to make the sweeping gains the Kremlin expected when they started this illegal war in Ukraine. With the military bogged down and making gradual gains in the eastern Donbas regions, but posing little threat to the rest of Ukraine, Putin has resorted to missile attacks on political centers across the country. The latest major attack occurred on Thursday, when a Russian submarine fired precision-guided Kalibr missiles at a concert hall and medical center in Victory Square in the formerly peaceful city of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine. Katya, an employee at the nearby Nova Poshta post office, told The Daily Beast what it was like to be a pawn in Putin’s geopolitical wrath. “It was midnight and we heard the air raid alarm and started to go to the shelter when the first rocket hit buildings just over the road from us. Some of our colleagues were injured when the windows were broken and the glass flew in,” he said. “We saw cars burning outside and smoke everywhere. Our building caught fire and I ran away.” Colonel Yuri Ignat of the Ukrainian Air Force, who is the region’s special adviser on air defense, explained that this is no longer a conventional war. “This is a major terrorist strike by a terrorist state that strikes peaceful areas and kills our people. What was their purpose, who did they want to hit, what did they want to do? Vinnytsia is not the first city where they kill innocent citizens.” “Someone is no longer needed. Because they were already covered with a black cloth.” — Elena Kostakova While the Kremlin has made slow and painful but real gains in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, its military machine has ground to a halt in all other parts of the country. Instead, Putin has relied on his fearsome arsenal of long-range missiles to terrorize civilian populations that remain out of range of his troops or artillery. He seems to think he can weaken Ukraine’s resolve to fight. Since June, Ukrainian officials and international observers have noted a steady increase in rocket shelling that is causing high numbers of civilian casualties across the country. Two weeks ago, the Russian Air Force dropped three Kh 22 unguided bombs on Serhiivka, a small coastal town near the port of Odessa, killing 22 Ukrainians. A few days before a strike hit a shopping mall in Kremenchuk killing 19 people. Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, told The Guardian in an interview: “We have a system to track and monitor all air and other attacks in our country, and what we’ve noticed recently is a tendency to destroy more and more politicians targets. They decided to terrorize the civilian population. These are not my feelings, but what the observation tells us.” Elena Kostakova, a 68-year-old pensioner, lived in the block of flats in Serhiivka that was destroyed by the strike. “Everything happened so fast,” he told the Daily Beast. “I heard the first explosion and ran outside. And it saved my life. Because when the second explosion happened, everything flew: both the windows and the glass. It was scary. “I saw the dead. It’s very creepy. Very scary. People are screaming. They are crying. They’re calling for an ambulance. The firefighters arrived. Fast too. And someone is no longer needed. Because they were already covered with a black cloth. It was very scary. But now the morning has come. It’s time to clean the glass and get back to business as usual.” Despite the hardships, Ukrainians continue to show the most remarkable resilience. When The Daily Beast arrived on the scene in Vinnytsia on the night of the strike, city officials had already cleared much of the rubble. Residents of civilian houses could be seen from the street repairing broken walls and windows. Katia and her colleagues all had brooms and shovels to sweep up the mess in their offices and planned to return to work next week. Authorities were removing the burnt orange peels of cars from the back of trucks. Among the 24 confirmed dead so far was 4-year-old Lisa Dmitrieva, a young girl with Down syndrome, whose mother was picking her up from a speech therapy class. An Instagram video posted by her mom shortly before the explosion showed a smiling and laughing young girl happily pushing her stroller around town. Now a photo of her torso lying next to her pram has become a symbol for Ukrainians of this new gruesome phase of the war defined by senseless death from the sky. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, saying it only targets Ukrainian military installations. These denials are very hard to believe. There are no military installations anywhere near Serhiivka, which is a town many miles from the front of no strategic importance. In Vinnytsia, Russian naval forces claim to have targeted a meeting of Ukrainian Air Force commanders meeting with Western arms suppliers. But Western arms dealers would be a legitimate military target, and for that reason they would almost certainly hold such meetings in a neighboring third country like Poland. Instead, many Ukrainians believe Putin is trying to send a message that everyone in the country is at risk, while the country refuses to bow to Russia’s aggression. He would like to be able to publicly pressure Zelensky to sign over Ukrainian territory in the east of the country or formally recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. This would allow Putin to claim a victory among domestic audiences. So far, residents across the country have faced death. For Valentine Oleynik, a 26-year-old IT worker who commutes between Kyiv and Vinnytsia, last week’s strike was his second of the war. “My old apartment was only a hundred meters away from the impact site. If I had taken the next train, I probably would have been driving through that square at the exact moment the missile fell.” He shrugs and explains that his previous apartment building in Kyiv had been hit twice by missiles. “The first time you hear an air raid siren you freak out and wonder what the hell is going on. But we’ve been hearing them constantly for months, so no one bothers to do anything anymore. We’re just trying to live our lives as normally as possible.” He tells me casually that “nowhere in Ukraine is safe.” He says this not in a tone of despair, but in the way he might say that Odessa or Kyiv have the same chance of light rain that afternoon. “Can you believe that before 2014 we saw the Russians as our friends?! We thought that if anyone ever tried to harm us from the West, they would be on our side. Now we have eight years of war. I think Ukraine will soon win this war. But now peace is not enough for us. We want justice and we want to see the people who committed all these terrible crimes punished for them.” Instead of forcing Ukrainians into submission, Putin’s campaign of terror is hardening their resolve. In the ruined center of Vinnytsia Square stands a replica of the World War II fighter plane – a monument to the Soviet Air Force that helped defeat the Nazi armies. Then the Russian and Ukrainian troops fought as part of one army: now they are disintegrating on the most brutal battlefields Europe has seen since 1945. Many holes have been opened in the fuselage and wings of the plane from rocket fragments, but the frame has held together . It looks like a bomber that has just returned from a daring bombing raid on Berlin. Standing under the monument, Colonel Ignat pointed to the wreckage and said: “The Russians want to bring us to our knees, make us surrender and wipe us out. But that will never happen and with the people’s help we know that Ukraine will win.”
