Russian strikes hit hospitals in Kharkiv and Dnipro

Residents of Kharkiv and Dnipro faced immediate medical disruptions this week after Russian forces struck facilities serving patients and staff. The attacks resulted in injuries to dozens of individuals and required the relocation of hundreds of people to other medical sites.

The timeline of strikes began in the early hours of Tuesday, November 3. A Russian bomb hit a hospital in eastern Kharkiv. Local officials reported that 73 people were injured. This group included patients, medical staff, and residents of nearby apartment buildings. The explosion shattered more than 1,000 windows in the hospital and surrounding structures. Authorities moved 226 patients to different facilities to ensure their safety.

A few hours after the Kharkiv strike, a Russian missile targeted a combined hospital and hospice in Dnipro, located 250 kilometers to the southwest. The impact forced more than 100 patients to leave the facility. Local officials noted that nearly half of these evacuees were terminally ill individuals receiving hospice care. The oldest patient among those moved was 90 years old. While no one died at the Dnipro hospital, two people lost their lives and 20 others were wounded in the same wave of strikes on the city.

These hospital strikes followed a deadly attack on a civilian aid center. On Monday, November 2, Russian warplanes dropped several bombs on a school in the village of Komyshuvakha. The village is situated 120 kilometers south of Dnipro. Humanitarian aid was being distributed to local residents at the time. Officials announced on Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 37. More than 30 people remain missing from that site. The bombing of Komyshuvakha stands as one of the deadliest attacks of the war.

Viktor Zabashta, director of Kharkiv’s regional center for emergency medical care, described the physical and psychological toll of the Tuesday strike. “There are injuries, wounds caused by debris . . and glass, as well as acute stress reactions,” Zabashta said. He added that the people affected were terrified, unwell, and mostly elderly. They had to be moved down to a bomb shelter and then sat in the cold in the admissions area.

Borys Filatov, the mayor of Dnipro, stated that the hospital in his city had only recently been renovated. He described the hospice as one of the few places where such assistance and care is provided to Dnipro residents and displaced people living there. “Now all of this has been destroyed by a Russian missile,” Filatov said.

The World Health Organization reports that more than 3,400 attacks on Ukrainian healthcare have occurred since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Of these, 590 took place this year. The strikes killed 31 people and injured more than 250. Robin Meldrum, country director in Ukraine for Médecins Sans Frontières, noted that the organization helped evacuate patients in Dnipro. “These attacks by Russian forces on the basic essentials of civilian life just keep coming,” Meldrum said.

Danielle Bell, head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, assessed the legal implications of the Komyshuvakha strike. She stated that either the Russian armed forces knew a humanitarian distribution was taking place, or they failed to take basic steps to find out what was happening in the village. “In either case, this attack seems to have violated the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” Bell said.

Russia continues daily strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and other infrastructure. These actions cause long blackouts and disrupt heating and water supply in some cities. Russia claims it strikes only targets used by the Ukrainian military. Late last month, the UN’s independent international commission of inquiry on Ukraine found that Russia had committed war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects.