There is nothing wrong with Adonis Maternity Hospital. The five-storey building is framed with signs depicting mothers kissing babies and text in the size of a billboard identifying it as an obstetric clinic. So when Russian forces began their offensive in Ukraine, the pregnant women fled Kyiv and other cities to seek refuge here, 35 kilometers west of the capital. “We were told it was the safest place on Earth,” said one of the women, who arrived in late February. With private rooms and manicured gardens with a small pond, the clinic was built as a shelter in Buzova, a village surrounded by farmland. Instead, it became an early example of Russian attacks on some of Ukraine’s most vulnerable. The Buzova Clinic bombing took place weeks before the March 9 bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol. The images of that attack, with bloodied late women on stretchers, caused a worldwide outcry. What happened in Buzova reinforces the evidence that Russian forces have been targeting women and children since the beginning of the invasion. The Globe and Mail interviewed two women who were at the clinic when they were attacked, which was confirmed by local authorities and Adonis, the company that owns the clinic. The Globe does not reveal the identities of the women because they are both surrogate mothers bound by strict confidentiality agreements. But they described in detail an atmosphere of fear, panic and black humor as Russian forces approached, launching an attack that left open holes in the walls, bullets in the floors and charred debris in the rooms. At times, people in the clinic were excited, such as when a priest took a stamp of a religious image from the clinic lobby and carried it from woman to woman, asking everyone to kiss it. The display of religiosity was excessive to the point of satire. “It was surreal,” said the first woman. Other times, certain death seemed so close that there was no thought of escaping. “When you say goodbye to your life many times a day, you are no longer in the mood to think about your own safety,” she said. The walls of Adonis Hospital in Buzova, a village west of Kiev, have been tarnished by bomb damage. Buzova’s location next to a major highway made it a key target for Russian troops coming down from Belarus in an attempt to encircle Kyiv. An initial attack failed, but on February 26, the power went out. The clinic staff decided not to use generators to avoid drawing the attention of Russian troops. Women gave birth to babies under the lights of a mobile phone. The women interviewed by The Globe remembered at least five births in the first four days of the war. One seemed to be premature birth caused by stress. A notebook left at the clinic revealed that on February 27, its residents included 11 pregnant women and 14 children. The next day, Russian heavy armor arrived, stopping 300 meters from the clinic but clearly visible from the upper floors. Little could be done to protect the facility. Without access to sand, staff filled bags with insulation and placed them in front of a window on the main floor. But the upper floors remained largely unprotected except for wardrobe staff who moved to block debris and flying glass. Bullet hole in one of the hospital rooms. On February 28, the day the attack began in earnest, the women and staff moved into the basement at 10:30 a.m. They could hear the screams of the fighter jets from above. They began to differentiate between different types of sound ammunition. “We were just lying down, covering our ears and opening our mouths,” the woman said, hoping to reduce the chance of being injured by the shockwave of a shell that exploded nearby. “We were lying in this position for hours.” Residents of the area had set up a checkpoint on the highway not far from the clinic. But Russian troops were “shooting chaotically at what was in front of them,” said Andriy Valchuk, a former Soviet soldier at the checkpoint. A drone has revealed a military escort with about 40 pieces of Russian equipment. “The shootings were so intense that the concrete blocks on the road jumped up and down because of the shock waves,” Mr Valchuk said. He and the other guards were equipped with only a few shotguns and Molotov cocktails. “When they started firing at the checkpoint, we withdrew,” he said. The billboard outside the hospital makes it clear to motorists that it is a maternity hospital. The Kremlin has said its troops have not targeted civilians or political infrastructure. But it reinforces the belief that one might not have noticed it was an obstetric clinic, Adonis CEO Vitaliy Girin said in a written response to questions from the Globe. Its signs are visible for kilometers. “All medical facilities across the country are marked, both on maps and with external recognition,” he said. “It is impossible not to know their location or to ignore the warning signs. “Unfortunately, the bombing of medical institutions has no purpose: it is an absurd and bloody act of violence, like the whole war.” As the attack continued, the women remained in the basement, playing on their phones to distract themselves and telling jokes to keep their spirits up. “All I could think about was: Do not give birth under these conditions,” said the second woman. The first woman likened the day of the bombing to contractions, which come first at long intervals and then reached an increasingly rapid succession. “The panic started. Everyone started screaming: “We’re done here. “We definitely ended up here,” he recalled. Then, as they lay in the dark, they heard voices. Men had arrived, offering to take them to safety. The women were skeptical. They had read the testimonies of Russian soldiers who set traps offering opportunities for evacuation. They told the men to leave. But when the men returned, they asked them, trying to find out if they were Russians, asking them to pronounce certain words in Ukrainian and to sing the national anthem. Svyatoslav Alexandrovich checks the damage in one of the hospital rooms. Among the men who arrived to take the women to safety was Svyatoslav Alexandrovich, a local lumber merchant. He drove his truck to the clinic with shells flying overhead. “I would not describe it as fear. “It was adrenaline – and an understanding that I had to be there,” he said. Get close enough to the entrance of the clinic for the women to come out. The first woman stopped at the door, so scared that her muscles would not go in front of her. The night sky was orange with fiery explosions. But she and the others escaped, being handed over to a bomb shelter near a local kindergarten. The entire clinic was evacuated. Weeks later, it stood as a broken proof of the violence he had suffered. The door frames were located in the corridors. A round crossed both an exterior wall and an interior wall before partially drilling the other side of the building. Serious atrocities have occurred elsewhere in Buzova. Local authorities reported the discovery of dozens of bodies along the nearby highway. The body of a man was found in a basement with his hands tied behind his back. Dozens of houses were destroyed. “They are just trying to kill us as a nation. That’s all I know, “said Ludmyla Zakabaluk, a local councilor. But the women from the clinic survived. “If they had not been evacuated, they would have died,” he said. “One hundred percent.”
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