Polina Melnyk and Ihor Tkachov were having breakfast on Tuesday when they heard the whistle of a missile fly low over their Poltava apartment block and, moments later, the sound of two explosions.
After working out that the target of the missile had been the military communications institute in the city in east-central Ukraine, far from the war’s frontlines, they jumped in the car and set off to offer their help. Melnyk and Tkachov are volunteer medics, and have worked at army stabilisation positions close to the frontline in recent months, seeing all kinds of terrible injuries.
None of that prepared them for the sight they found on arrival at the institute, which had been hit by two missiles, reportedly just as morning roll-call was taking place. The strike would turn out to be one of the deadliest single strikes of the war, and the darkest day in a grim week for Ukraine as Russia continued its terror from the air.
Outside the institute, Tkachov saw people loading the wounded into an open-backed truck; when it was filled it set off to the hospital, leaving a trail of blood behind.
“People were screaming that we need stretchers – but there were no stretchers,” recalled Tkachov in an interview two days later. On the road outside, people staggered around bloodied and confused, while first responders carried out casualties and laid them out under a row of trees. A man missing an eye let out piercing screams; those who had lost limbs and were bleeding out moaned more quietly.
“The people who were making the most noise weren’t necessarily the ones who needed help fastest,” said Melnyk. The volunteers tried to perform a chaotic triage, saving as many as they could by applying tourniquets before ambulances arrived to rush the patients to hospitals. Many did not make it.
As of Friday morning, 55 people were reported dead in the attack, with more than 300 injured. It is not clear if any of the victims were civilians. The institute is a training facility that gives soldiers skills in electronics, cyber-warfare and battlefield communications; its graduates are “the intellectual elite of the Ukrainian armed forces”, according to a poster on an information stand outside. In the current conditions of all-out war, many soldiers are sent there for a month of training before going back to the front.
Russia’s defence ministry said the institute trained Ukrainian soldiers “involved in strikes on civilian objects on the territory of the Russian Federation”, and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels rejoiced at the high death toll.
Amid the mourning, questions are being asked about why so many people were present at a known military facility. Ukraine’s ground forces command announced an investigation “to determine whether enough was done to protect the lives and health of servicemen” at the institute.
Officials have denied claims that morning roll-call was taking place when the strike hit, and say instead that the airstrikes caught people evacuating the building, rushing to the shelter. The attack came seconds after an air-raid alarm sounded, and Ihor Mitsyuk, the head of the training centre, said the facade of the building had collapsed, causing walls to fall down and bury people under the rubble.
Strikes on clear military targets often appear to be the exception rather than the norm in Russia’s brutal and ruthless air campaign against Ukraine, with critical energy infrastructure and civilian neighbourhoods frequently targeted. A strike on Wednesday on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv hit a civilian neighbourhood and killed seven people, including children.
“They are trying to stretch our air defences by striking all over the country in quick succession,” said a Ukrainian security source. “And by sending in waves of drones and missiles every night, they can make calculations about where the systems are at any given time based on what is shot down and recalibrate accordingly,” the source added.
Ukraine has for months been desperately asking for more air defence systems to keep more of the country safe from strikes. While the capital, Kyiv, and many other big cities are well-protected, there are not enough systems to protect all cities at all times.
On Friday, the British government announced the transfer of 650 new missile systems to Ukraine to boost its air defences. The first batch, made by th French defence group Thales,is to be sent to Ukraine this year.
The UK defence secretary, John Healey, said: “In recent days, we have seen the tragic cost of Russia’s indiscriminate strikes on Poltava and Lviv … These new UK-made missiles will support Ukraine to defend its people, infrastructure, and territory.”
As well as requests for more air defence equipment, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is engaged in a long-running quest to persuade the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia, which Kyiv says would help prevent the Russian air terror at source and minimise the threat to the country.
For now, the risk of airstrikes remains acute every night, even in places such as Poltava, where most people were paying little attention to sirens as big attacks are relatively rare. As the week drew to a close, dozens of victims of the onslaught remained seriously injured in hospitals around the city.
“The nurses here see blood and injuries every day, but they were crying when they saw so many young people injured,” said Hrihorii Oksak, 54, the head doctor of one of Poltava’s biggest hospitals, where 70 of the injured were brought on Tuesday morning, and many remain in a critical condition.
Evhen and Maksym, both 27, were sharing a room on the neurosurgery ward when the Guardian visited the hospital on Thursday. Maksym worked as an IT technician until earlier this year; he was called up to fight in spring, as part of Ukraine’s mobilisation drive. Evhen, who had been exempted from military service because of a medical condition, signed up anyway two months ago. Both men had been sent to the academy in Poltava for a month of training.
By their bedsides, their mothers fussed nervously, having rushed to Poltava from their homes elsewhere in Ukraine when they heard the news. Evhen had been relatively lucky, receiving shrapnel wounds to the face and other minor injuries. Maksym, however, had a serious head injury that doctors said would require two months in hospital and, eventually, a titanium implant to plug a hole in his skull.
Oleksandra, Maksym’s mother, said her son was conscious but in unbearable pain and not able to communicate. “I know that he can feel his mum is next to him but I don’t think he understands what happened,” she said. “We just really hope everything will be all right.”
