‘They just want to destroy us’: Anguish, anger as Ukraine buries children killed in Russian strike

The priests arrived at the children’s playground with a teddy bear, swinging incense and chanting the names of the nine children who died here in Kryvyi Rih.

Tymofii Tsvitok, the three-year-old who loved hunting for ladybirds. Alina Kutsenko and Danylo Nikitskyi, 15-year-olds who’d just started dating, telling their friends that it was serious. Herman Tripolets, a nine-year-old who’d recently presented a book report at school on one of his favourite reads, about a fantastical land for children – only to enter, they had to sacrifice a memory.

Three days had passed since Russia struck the playground with a ballistic missile on Friday, killing 20 – among them nine children – and injuring 90. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights said it was the worst attack on kids since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

A mourner puts flowers on a memorial wall during a farewell ceremony for three schoolchildren in Kryvyi Rih on Monday, local time.Credit: AP/Evgeniy Maloletka

Kryvyi Rih – the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – had barely begun to mourn its dead when Moscow falsely claimed the attack was a successful strike on a “military target”.

As medics zipped the bodies of children into bags here on Friday, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed it had killed 85 officers at “a meeting between commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Western instructors” at a restaurant.

The Washington Post reviewed security footage from the restaurant near the park, which showed employees cleaning up after an afternoon beauty industry forum hosted by a local business association.

No military were present, the video shows, and local officials and witnesses said only civilians were killed.

“To compare that [statement] with the reality, seeing the bodies of all the kids,” said Svitlana Tolmach, 36, who attended the beauty forum and was hospitalised for a serious head injury from the strike, “it haunts me”.

Flowers and toys were left on a swing to commemorate victims killed in Russia’s missile attack on a residential area in Kryvyi Rih.Credit: AP

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov doubled down on Russia’s claims during a Monday news conference, brushing off a question about whether Moscow might have made a mistake with inaccurate intelligence.

“I suggest that we focus here on the statements of our Ministry of Defence,” Peskov said. “Our military hits exclusively military and near-military targets.”

On Monday morning, local time, the priests stood in the damp spring grass – a soccer ball’s kick away from where the missile burrowed more than a metre into the earth – and prayed for the victims.

They also included seven-year-old Radyslav Yatsko, who was sitting in the back seat of his parents’ car near the playground with his baby sister, who survived. Arina Samodina, also 7, who was playing on the swings with her four-year-old cousin, undergoing her second lifesaving surgery. Arina’s grandfather, watching from a park bench, also died.

“There are no words that we can find for families who lost the most sacred thing,” said the head priest, Mercury Skorokhod, to a gathering of neighbours bundled in winter coats and wool hats, faces drawn like the bitter April sky.

He stepped past two ribbons of caution tape, placing the teddy bear on the sandpit.

The playground has become a repository for Kryvyi Rih’s grief.Credit: AP/Evgeniy Maloletka

‘They just want to destroy us’

The Iskander missile launched from Russia’s Taganrog region – about 400 kilometres away – reached the playground within minutes, Ukrainian authorities say. It exploded grenade-sized bomblets in the air, showering the area with shrapnel and eviscerating everything in their path.

Razor-sharp shards of metal stripped bark from the trees. They shattered windows. Snapped the chains off the swing set. Punctured cent-sized holes in the metal slide and pounded holes in the pavement.

And they sliced through small bodies, leaving bloodstains in the sand by the merry-go-round.

“The hardest part is to explain to the parents that they don’t have a kid any more,” said Nazar Misiura, an anaesthesiologist at a local hospital, who treated so many victims after the strike that he knew them only by triage number, not name.

The playground has become a repository for the city’s grief, every surface now covered in spring flowers, plush animals, candy bars and toy cars. The seesaw tipped under the weight of gifts. Candles burned, the smell sweet and overpowering, as nearby, neighbours sliced plywood to cover their gaping windows.

Teachers and students during the farewell ceremony on Monday.Credit: AP/Evgeniy Maloletka

A 13-year-old boy in a blue sweatshirt – hoodie pulled up over his brown hair – pried a fist-sized chunk of shrapnel from the soil to show his friends. Approaching the swing set, they pushed their fingers through the jagged holes in the metal frame. Already, neighbours were debating what would become of the playground.

“I think this place needs to be bulldozed,” said Vlad Umrukhin, a 29-year-old medic who lives nearby.

He gripped his three-year-old daughter in his arms, her pink Velcro sneakers kicking into his side, a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Their long afternoons on the swing set were over, another piece of her childhood forever lost to war.

“The ceasefire is laughable,” he said. “They just want to destroy us.”

‘Our future’

By Monday morning, third-grade teacher Natalia Freilikh still hadn’t decided how to explain to her students why Herman Tripolets wouldn’t be in class that day. He was six years old when the war began, nine when it ended his life.

While the children had grown accustomed to violence, they weren’t used to being targeted in the sandpit. Since January, Russia has struck their city 12 times – probably related to its proximity to the front lines – leaving 32 dead and 173 people injured, including those killed on Friday. Hours after the attack on the playground, drones killed another person and injured seven in Kryvyi Rih, officials said.

Freilikh had spent hours texting with Herman’s classmates. They were struggling, she said. Three days of mourning were set to begin – the most Kryvyi Rih has ever had – with the first funerals beginning that day. Some children were being buried together in joint memorials, including the 15-year-old couple, their open caskets side-by-side in the church.

“I’m very sad and scared,” wrote one girl to Freilikh.

“He was a friend to me,” said another.

“I don’t know how to react,” Freilikh said, wondering if class should be cancelled. “Should I put an end to this? But I understand kids have to grieve in their own way.”

Ultimately, she didn’t have to decide.

The air alert siren again cancelled class, now held in a bomb shelter beneath the school when it wasn’t online. Freilikh’s third-floor classroom was no longer deemed safe.

Hours later, once the threat had passed, the school held a special ceremony for the children and their parents to honour Herman and two of his schoolmates, who’d also died in the strike. A small, white-clothed table held portraits of the two boys and girl, nestled amid a cluster of bouquets.

“We are gathered here because of tragic events that happened on a sunny day like this,” said headmaster Andrii Rogal. “Russians are taking not only the best of our sons and daughters, but our future.”

After a moment of silence, children carried flowers to the memorial for other children before returning to the arms of their mothers.

Across Kryvyi Rih, Herman’s family were preparing for their final goodbye. The boy who loved Legos and Roblox had been measured for his casket and dressed in nice clothes.

“When a person is born, you see how fragile [life] is in that moment,” his father, Valerii Tripolets, said.

“Those who start wars, they need to be present in those moments to see the vulnerability of human life. I was changed after the birth of my son. I changed my opinions on the world … I saw how he was born, and I saw how he died.”

He paused, awash in grief. “How do we go on?”

The Washington Post

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