The largest Russian strikes on civilian objects in Ukraine, in which hundreds of people died

During the nearly five-month war in Ukraine, Russia has carried out many attacks on civilian targets. The last of them was the rocket attack on Vinica in the morning hours of July 14. It has already been confirmed that 20 people have died, three of whom are children. About 90 people were injured.
Ukrainian authorities, international organizations and Western countries accuse Russia not only of killing civilians, but also of violating the laws and customs of war. Professional international organizations are gathering evidence, documenting and investigating Russia's actions together with Ukrainian investigators. One of the main violations of international humanitarian law, for which Russia is accused, is the targeted killing of civilians.

Russian troops are destroying infrastructure and historical monuments, massively shelling residential areas of Ukrainian cities and villages using artillery, rocket launchers and ballistic missiles, as well as using prohibited ammunition.
In the Kremlin, the introduction of troops into Ukraine is called "demilitarization and denazification", and all destroyed civilian objects, according to the Russian authorities, look like military bases or weapons depots.
BBC News Ukraine collected the most interesting cases of bombing of civilian objects with the highest number of victims.

Five-story building in Časovo Jar

The latest and one of the largest in terms of the number of civilians killed was the attack on multi-story buildings in the town of Časov Jar, Bakmut district, in the Donetsk region.
The city, where more than 10,000 people lived before the war, was hit on the evening of July 9. According to the Ukrainian authorities, Russia attacked Chasiv Yar with "Iskander" missiles. The rocket hit residential buildings. The entrance of one multi-story building, which later turned out to be a dormitory, completely collapsed, another five-story building was damaged.
By July 13, 48 dead bodies were found in the ruins, including a nine-year-old boy who, according to preliminary information, died together with his mother.

"Who did our people sin against?" - asks a local, an elderly woman who managed to hide from the shelling in the basement.
Following the strike, the Russian military claimed to have hit a Ukrainian military outpost in Chasovo Yar and reportedly destroyed a US weapons hangar and killed "more than 300 Ukrainian nationalists".

Attack on the shopping center in Kremenchuk

June 27 is the most tragic day in the modern history of the Poltava region. In Kremenchuk, Russian rockets targeted the shopping and entertainment center "Amstor", where there were hundreds of people. Shelling was carried out with Kh-22 missiles. They were dropped from a Tu-22 M3 bomber from the Shaykovka airport in Russia, explained the command of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
 Cleaning up the ruins took almost a week.
"21 people died, one more person is missing," said the mayor of Kremenchuk Vitalij Malecki.
No one in the city expected that the shopping center would be shelled, because it is not a military facility.
"The shopping center is not dangerous for Russians. 
We thought we were far from the border," 26-year-old Maksim, who worked in an electronics store in Kremenchuk, told the BBC. He has a shrapnel wound, a concussion and numerous scratches.
"I thought they were trying to destroy our infrastructure. I didn't even think they would hit the mall. There are women and children there. It's a safe place," recalls Mikola, who was in the mall that day with his wife. They managed to escape from the burning building.
The Ministry of Defense of Russia announced that they targeted the hangars with weapons from the EU and the USA. They apparently shot at the road vehicle factory in Kremenchug, but the detonation of the ammunition also caused a fire in the shopping center, which, according to the Russian authorities, was not working.
But a video released by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky clearly shows a huge rocket hitting the mall building.

Shelling of the station in Kramatorsk
One of the bloodiest attacks was the rocket attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk in April, when 61 people died, including many children.

That day, April 8, there were hundreds of people at the station waiting for an evacuation train to the central and western regions of Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities have called on the residents of the region on the front line to go to safer places due to the escalation in Donbass.
The Russians targeted the station with a Point U guided missile. As the Security Service of Ukraine later determined, it was launched from the territory of the Donetsk region, which has been under Russian control since 2014.
Moscow stated that they do not have these weapons. However, international investigators have evidence that the Russians have already used these weapons near Chernihiv.
At the time of the attack, there were about 4,000 people in the station. As a result of the shelling, 121 people were injured. Natalija and her daughter Jana are among them. They planned to go to Yaremče, Ivano-Frankivsk region.
While they were waiting for the train, Jana asked her mother for tea prepared by volunteers on the platform.
"I tried to get up, but how? I looked at my leg, I looked at Jana, but she doesn't have sneakers," Natalija recalls her first feelings after the shelling.
She lost her leg, daughter Jana - both. Natalija still cannot forgive herself for going to tea.

Drama theater in Mariupol

The most massive place of death from Russian bombs could probably be the Mariupol Drama Theater. This city is occupied by the Russians, so it is impossible to verify the exact number of victims. Numerous eyewitnesses say that many people were killed or injured. And Amnesty International called the Russian attack a war crime.
Mariupol has been under blockade since March 1 and exposed to relentless shelling by the Russian army every day.
Many residents of Mariupol, who lost their homes or were looking for a safe haven, hid in the drama theater building.
The word "children" is written in Russian in large white letters on the front and back of the Mariupol Theater. This is also confirmed by the Maxar satellite image.
But despite that, on March 16, Russian aviation dropped a powerful bomb on the drama theater in the center of Mariupol.

The Russian Ministry of Defense denied the fact of the air attack on the theater in Mariupol, saying that the explosion was planted by "nationalists".

Amnesty International, based on the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses, concludes in its latest report that the Russians most likely dropped two 500-kilogram bombs from a fighter plane, which detonated simultaneously.
According to the Mariupol City Council, around 300 people died there. Petro Andriushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, claims that there were about 600 people in the theater before the attack. 300 of them were in a shelter under the theater. They managed to survive.
Amnesty International suggests that the death toll may have been lower, as humanitarian corridors opened days before the attack and some people, including those hiding in the theater, left the city.
During the attack on the drama theater, Viktorija Dubovitska and her two children were in the spotlight room. The wave of the explosion was so powerful that the woman was thrown against the wall.

"After the explosion, screams and moans were heard, but my child was silent. And that was the scariest thing. Only then did I hear her voice. She was calling: "Mom!" - says the woman.
Victoria managed to dig out her daughter buried in stones. She was alive.
When, after the explosion, the woman came out of the ruins with her children, she saw many bodies around - wounded and killed.

Shelling of the Kharkiv regional state administration

On March 1, a video of a Russian missile hitting the regional state administration building in Kharkiv circulated on the Internet. It was the first time that the scale of death and destruction that the Russian army brought to Ukraine was clearly visible on it.
"There were two hits. A large part of the building was destroyed, including the chairman's office - he was gone," the regional administration reported.
As a result of the attack, a total of 24 people died, and ten more were injured. Not only the people inside the building were killed, but also those who drove past the administration on Šumska Street.

Volunteers Valerija Jutina and Julija Ždanovska were among the dead. The latter was a mathematics teacher. In her memory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology organized a free math education program for Ukrainian high school students.
Professor Marina Vjazovska, who recently received a prestigious mathematics award - the Fields Medal, paid tribute to Julija Ždanovska.

"Julia was a person full of light, and her big dream was to teach mathematics to children in Ukraine. When someone like her dies, it's like the future dies," Vyazovska said in her speech at the award ceremony in Helsinki.
The building of the Kharkiv Regional Administration was built in 1955, and the administration has always been located in its premises. International humanitarian law prohibits the bombing of objects that are historical monuments, cultural or spiritual heritage. Many such buildings were damaged in Kharkiv.

Shelling of the Mykolaiv regional state administration

The story of the shelling of buildings where institutions are located was repeated on March 29. The Nikolaev regional state administration was affected. The explosion happened at the moment when the working day started there.
"The girl died on my floor. I hugged her and passed, two minutes passed, and we passed each other," says the employee of the Regional State Administration in tears in a video released by the State Emergency Service.
36 people died then. 34 bodies were pulled from the ruins, two more people died in the hospital.
The explosive wave from the impact on the nine-story building of the State Administration damaged residential and administrative buildings nearby.
"It's just terrible," said Nina, a saleswoman at the store where the explosion shattered the windows. "But the important thing is that we're alive. We'll fix it all."
The office of the head of the military administration, Vitali Kim, was also destroyed in the explosion. He explains that he survived because he overslept.

Recreation center in the Odesa region

On the night of July 1, the Russian army shelled Odessa. The shelling of the Bilgorod-Dniestrovsky district in the region was carried out from the direction of the Black Sea with three Kh-22 missiles, the Ukrainian army confirmed.
Two rockets landed in the popular resort of Serhijevka. One recreation center was destroyed, and another, which later turned out to belong to Moldova, was damaged.
22 people died and 30 were injured, including three children.
Commenting on the Odesa shelling, Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitro Peskov reminded that the Russian army apparently does not shoot at "civilian targets and civilian infrastructure".

At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine emphasized that there are no military facilities near the destroyed residential building and recreation center in Serhiyivka.
The UN office reminded the Kremlin that any attack on non-military facilities can be qualified as a war crime.