Ukraine is a mostly Christian country. The high points of the Church calendar are marked by the faithful, as Russia’s missile targeters well know.
So when the first Iskander-M ballistic missile struck the heart of Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine, at 10:20 am on April 13 (PALM SUNDAY), there was little doubt who was being targeted and why. There are no military facilities in the center of the city, and anyway Iskanders are “highly accurate” missiles that will strike 7m-30m (23ft-90ft) from their intended target.
The desire to kill and wound civilians was only underlined by the method used. Russia’s missile men ensured the second Iskander arrived minutes after the first and was armed with a fragmentation warhead designed to scatter white-hot metal shards over hundreds of feet. This method is known as the double-tap and was perfected by Russia and its regime allies during the war in Syria. It’s designed to hurt those who go to help after an initial attack.
It succeeded. At least 34 people were killed and 117 wounded. Many were shredded in a bus and others in cars or as they walked along the streets. Among those hurt was a little girl saying “It hit me,” to her distraught and blood-covered mother.
Russian officers can read websites like anyone else. Church services in Ukraine are not military secrets and nor are other civic events.
One of the missiles struck less than half a mile from a cathedral. It hit the Congress Center of one Ukraine’s best institutes of higher education — Sumy State University — a well-regarded venue for cultural and artistic events. It was due to host a performance of the children’s play The Capricious Princess, staged by the local Youth and Children’s Theater and the audience was already gathering.
When the second blast hit, a 13-year-old schoolboy, Kyrylo Illiashenko, got out of the blazing bus and, despite shrapnel wounds to his head, unlocked the front door to release other survivors.
According to Ukraine’s military intelligence, the strike on Sumy was carried out with Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles launched by Russia’s 112th and 448th missile brigades from Voronezh and Kursk regions. President Trump said he’d been told the strike was a mistake. Ukrainians, however, recognize a pattern — this is not a one-off, not a slip of the hand. It wasn’t an accident when the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, packed with young cancer victims, was struck in July, or the Kramatorsk rail station attack in April 2022 that killed 50, or the many, many other attacks by Russia on civilians. It’s a strategy of terror.
Just days before the Sumy attack, a similar strike targeted a children’s playground in Kryvyi Rih. That took the lives of nine adults and nine children. Toys scattered across rubble, small shoes next to lifeless bodies, a place of fun and innocence covered in young blood.
As President Zelenskyy bluntly stated, “Words have never stopped ballistic missiles.” A strong military presence in Ukraine — in any form — is the only language Moscow understands. The Sky Shield initiative implementation is long overdue.
Since the beginning of the ceasefire talks, Russia has not paused in terrorizing civilians to sow fear. The missile strikes on Palm Sunday are a loud, bloody answer to those in the West still entertaining illusions about Russian intentions. The Polish foreign minister said it best — these attacks are a mockery of peace efforts. The symbolism of a Palm Sunday strike is lost on no one.
The new US administration says it is focused on peace and is determined to achieve a settlement. Yet, while Ukraine agreed to the proposed 30-day ceasefire, Russia has rejected it. Instead, the Kremlin is adding the finishing touches to its planned summer offensive to seize more Ukrainian territory.
All Ukrainians want an end to the slaughter. We have suffered the loss of 20% of our territory, millions have been displaced, and hundreds of thousands killed and wounded. No Ukrainian family is untouched by Russia’s 10 years of aggression.
And no one beyond Ukraine should feel untouched by bloody Russian aggression. As the poet and soldier John Donne wrote 400 years ago: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind . . . never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
The bell is now tolling for civilization itself.
Elena Davlikanova is a Democracy Fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.) Her work is focused on Ukraine and Russia’s domestic issues and their effects on global peace. She is an experienced researcher, who in 2022 conducted the studies ‘The Work of the Ukrainian Parliament in Wartime’ and ‘The War of Narratives: The Image of Ukraine in Media.’
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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