Emergency staff reply on the Okhmatdyt youngsters’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday.
Alex Babenko/AP
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Alex Babenko/AP
Editor’s observe: This story accommodates descriptions of casualties in missile assaults.
KYIV and LVIV, Ukraine — A barrage of Russian missiles hit Ukrainian cities Monday, killing not less than 36 individuals and injuring greater than 149, and destroying a big youngsters’s hospital in Kyiv, the state emergency service mentioned.
“We thought this was our bastion of security, that this couldn’t happen here,” Khrystyna Korvach, a 29-year-old anesthesiologist on the Okhmatdyt youngsters’s hospital, instructed NPR. “But it didn’t turn out that way. Why? Because Russia wants to kill us all.”
At the least 22 individuals, together with two youngsters, have been killed in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and one other 82 injured, based on the Kyiv Metropolis Navy Administration. There have been extra casualties in central and jap Ukrainian cities.
Ukrainian officers mentioned the Russian navy used fast-moving Kinzhal ballistic missiles and cruise missiles within the assaults, which got here a day earlier than the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.
Russia’s Protection Ministry mentioned in a press release that its forces have been responding to the “Kyiv regime’s attempts to damage Russian economic and energy facilities” and used long-range weapons to hit “military industrial facilities of Ukraine and air bases of the Ukrainian armed forces.” Russia denied hitting civilian targets and accused Ukraine of “hysterics” earlier than the NATO summit.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy known as for an emergency assembly of the United Nations Safety Council and mentioned Russian President Vladimir Putin should be held accountable.
“We would like to see greater resolve in our partners and hear resolute responses to these attacks,” Zelenskyy mentioned in Warsaw, the place he stopped on his technique to the NATO summit. “I can see a possibility for our partners to use their air defense systems in a way to hit the missiles that are carrying out attacks in our country.”
The strike on the Okhmatdyt hospital, one in all Ukraine’s largest remedy facilities for youngsters with most cancers, drew worldwide outrage. The hospital’s toxicology ward was largely destroyed, in addition to intensive care and surgical procedure items. Rescue staff mentioned individuals have been trapped underneath the rubble. Zelenskyy posted a video to social media exhibiting dazed bystanders making an attempt to clear the ruins. Inside, blood was seen in sufferers’ rooms the place home windows had been blown out.
Korvach, the anesthesiologist, described chaotic scenes of making an attempt to evacuate injured workers and terrified younger sufferers, a few of whom have been on ventilators.
Kids, hospital sufferers, conceal in a bomb shelter at one of many largest youngsters’s hospitals of Ukraine, Okhmatdyt, throughout a Russian missile assault on Monday.
Oleksandr Magula/International Photos Ukraine by way of Getty Photos
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Oleksandr Magula/International Photos Ukraine by way of Getty Photos
“We started carrying the children in our arms to the emergency department on the ground floor,” she mentioned.
One other anesthesiologist, Yaroslava Ierofieieva, 51, mentioned the missiles struck when the hospital was busy with operations.
“Everything flew toward the doctors, the children,” she mentioned. “The doctors finished in the operating rooms and walked into corridors filled with smoke. The children knew what was going on.”
The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, mentioned in a press release {that a} U.N. group on website noticed youngsters “receiving treatment for cancer in hospital beds set up in parks and on streets, where medical workers had quickly established triage areas among chaos, dust and debris.”
Monday’s assaults have added an urgency to Tuesday’s NATO summit, the place the safety alliance’s seventy fifth anniversary may even be marked. NATO leaders are anticipated to rebuff Ukraine’s membership bid however U.S. officers say they may supply extra air protection techniques to assist Ukraine fend off near-daily Russian strikes.
Ukrainian leaders say they’ve been defending not solely their very own nation in opposition to Russia however the Western democratic beliefs that underpin NATO.
A well being care employee seems to be by means of a window of a broken working room as individuals clear rubble on the constructing of one in all Ukraine’s largest youngsters’s hospitals, Okhmatdyt, partially destroyed by a Russian missile strike on Monday.
Yevhenii Zavhorodnii/International Photos Ukraine by way of Getty Photos
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Yevhenii Zavhorodnii/International Photos Ukraine by way of Getty Photos
“The major thing that has to come out of this summit has to be total unambiguity of the future of Ukraine in NATO,” mentioned Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and former authorities minister who has been advocating for Ukraine’s NATO membership for years. “And this is important not exclusively for Ukraine. That is important for NATO itself.”
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the U.S. and different NATO international locations have contributed billions of {dollars} in navy assist for Ukraine. A senior U.S. official instructed NPR that the U.S. is about to present extra air protection techniques to Ukraine at this week’s summit and likewise present a longer-term dedication to safety wants. The official requested to not be named to temporary reporters earlier than the administration publicly publicizes new weaponry for Ukraine.
However Mustafa Nayyem, who till final month was accountable for Ukraine’s reconstruction company, mentioned he’s annoyed that U.S. officers additionally insist that Ukraine mustn’t be part of NATO till it wins the warfare.
“We understand that without support of NATO,” he mentioned, “we will not be able to win, so it’s quite a dilemma and paradox.”
Ukrainians, too, have voiced frustration at what they view as some NATO international locations’ deal with placating Russia.
“NATO calls itself one of the strongest, the most advanced alliances in the world, but they don’t act decisively,” mentioned Hennadiy Menko, a 27-year-old veterinarian in Kyiv. “They seem like a dog on a chain that barks and that’s it.”
NPR’s Joanna Kakissis reported from Lviv. Kateryna Malofieieva and Polina Lytvynova reported from Kyiv. NPR’s Tom Bowman contributed to this report from Washington.
