Russian missiles devastate children's hospital in Kyiv

The night was sultry and sticky. Sleep came heavily, so when the sirens wailed early in the morning, Anna Brudna woke up immediately.

She looked at her phone’s clock: nearly 8:30 PM EST. A coincidence? Surely they do it on purpose! They torment us. It’s the time of deepest sleep and regeneration, and somewhere at an airport in Murmansk or Saratov, warplanes took off. Maybe a MiG-31, or maybe a Tu-95. They have hundreds of them, just like all sorts of rockets and bombs. But they don't always fire them. They circle near the border until they almost run out of fuel. And the entire map of Ukraine is red with alarms.

The sirens wail. It supposedly lasts only seven seconds but feels like at least fifteen minutes. The sound is even, paralyzing. It sends a chill down your spine. You want to jump up and run. But where? To a musty basement? To the hallway, hide behind a double wall? In a few hours, it's time to wake up. No, it's better to turn over on the other side and fall into a restless, shallow sleep.

Anna knows that an intense day awaits her. Mondays on the bone marrow transplant unit at Okhmatdyt, Ukraine's largest children's hospital, are always like this

Test results for the patients will come in shortly. They need to be analyzed and treatment adjusted. This week, it’s all hands on deck. Four transplants are planned. There’s also Serhij, a 6-year-old leukemia patient of Anna’s, waiting for surgery.

She will disinfect her hands before Anna enters his room and puts on a new cap, gown, and mask. Serhij has no immunity; any infection poses a deadly threat. His room, therefore, has sterile conditions. The air humidity and temperature are carefully controlled.

At the bedside, there’s a small command centre. Infusion pumps, a screen, and equipment constantly monitor oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and body temperature. The room is modern: new colourful furniture, a bed for a parent, its own bathroom, and a large window with a view of Kyiv.

Much can be said about Ukrainian healthcare. Hospitals are underfunded, haunted by dingy corridors, lack of medications, and equipment. But Okhmatdyt is an exception on a national scale. It’s like a town with dozens of buildings where 18,000 children are treated annually. The toughest cases from all over Ukraine.

In 2019, a new building was commissioned. Five oncology departments, hematology, diagnostics, and ten operating rooms. Everything is “euro-standard,” as they say in Ukraine. European, modern, friendly.

In the morning, the sleep-deprived city heads to work. The sun blazes mercilessly. The air smells of melting asphalt. Crowds pour into the underground and spill out at bus stops.

Among this sea of people, Oksana, a short brunette with an oval face, pushes her way. Breathless, she rushes to the toxicology unit. She wants to get there before seven to kiss her daughter before the nurses take her for dialysis.

Two years ago, Solomiya received a diagnosis: kidney failure, terminal stage. Since then, she has practically not left the premises of Okhmatdyt.

“It’s our ‘home 2’. That’s what we call it,” says Oksana.

The dialysis will last four hours, so the mothers go for coffee at the nearest kiosk. Some have been in the hospital for years. They are as close as family.

At 3:52 AM EST, the sirens start wailing again. Some children go into hiding. Others, confined to beds in intensive care, cannot. Four operations are ongoing in the operation rooms. In toxicology, children are connected to dialysis.

Also, in Anna’s unit, most patients should not leave their sterile rooms. Only once did the hospital administration order a full evacuation. Anna doesn’t even remember exactly when that was. “Sometime in the first weeks of the invasion.” Because that time blurred into one.

The staff lived in the hospital because moving around the city was risky. Children ended up in the trauma ward daily. Fragmentation wounds, gunshot wounds, burns, severed limbs. Parents killed a child in critical condition. Okhmatdyt took everyone in.

In oncology, the mood was gloomy. How long would they be able to treat the children? Have electricity and medications? Missiles were falling on Kyiv. The hospital walls were shaking. During one of these attacks, the entire unit went to the basement. A closed space, dozens of cramped people and children with no immunity, balancing between life and death.

Afterwards, many children had complications caused by infections. A life-threatening condition. Now, parents prefer not to risk it. Infection seems like a more tangible danger than a missile strike. And many, like Oksana, believe that a children’s hospital cannot be a target. They feel safe at Okhmatdyt.

Anna has no such illusions. She painfully experienced the bombing of a maternity ward in Mariupol. Then, the death of her colleague from the unit, Oksana Leontieva. During a missile attack in October 2022, her car burned in the middle of the road in central Kyiv. Her 7-year-old son still believes that his mum will come home when the war ends.

The sirens wail; Anna tries to ignore them. She sits at her desk in the doctor's room, studying the test results.

One of the doctors in the room is visibly upset. She insists that everyone move to the corridor, away from the windows. But no one moves. Sometimes, the alarms repeat six times a day. When would they have time to treat?

But the doctor does not give up. She tracks the course of the attack on Telegram channels: planes have taken off. The first group of missiles is heading towards the Chernihiv region. A few minutes later, another group enters Ukrainian airspace from the south. More planes are in the air. Missiles from the north. They change their trajectory. It’s a massive attack on Kyiv. Estimated time of impact: eight minutes.

Tension fills the room. Thudding sounds come from outside. The air defences have sprung into action. One, two, three missiles. A powerful explosion, something hit close by. Windows rattle, and columns of smoke rise above central Kyiv—seconds to tragedy.

Oksana saw the nurse's frightened face and immediately understood that something was up. She peered into each room, urging everyone to quickly return to the shelter.

“What about the children?”

“The doctors are getting them now.”

The toxicology unit is an old, three-storey brick building. Doctors are reluctant to leave their rooms on the top floor. Work, test results. 30-year-old nephrologist Svitlana Lukyanchyk has just returned from holiday. She’s trying to catch up on things.

When the first explosions are heard, she quickly goes to the children. She faces a difficult choice: interrupt dialysis, endanger their health, or ignore the wailing alarm.

Oksana, along with other parents, goes down to the basement. Everyone is fielding calls from home: “Are you alright?”. Before she can answer, Oksana hears a whistle. Fractions of a second later, a dull crack, a powerful shockwave. It’s dark, everything is swirling, rubble falls onto her head. It’s hard to breathe, and the basement is filled with thick dust and smoke. There’s a smell of rocket fuel.

Someone shines a phone light. Oksana sees she is buried in rubble up to her knees. She’s dizzy. She doesn’t think clearly, but instinct pushes her to the exit. Outside, smoke, dust. People are running in panic. A young woman is holding a bloody child in her arms. Someone is screaming terribly.

Oksana looks at the toxicology building and finally understands what has happened. She howls in pain. Medicines and torn mattresses on which the children slept are scattered around. The part of the building where the doctors' room was, and below it the dialysis room, is now a pile of bricks. A body hangs from the window. Slender, pale hands dangle lifelessly.

Oksana wants to get inside, but the entrances are blocked with rubble. She tries to climb through the window but can’t. She screams in helplessness. She runs around the building. Comes back to the same place again. Passers-by appear. Someone brings a ladder. Parents try to climb it, but the ladder slips, nearly toppling them. The wail of approaching fire engines and ambulances everywhere.

Finally, Oksana gets inside. The body she saw from the window was the doctor, Svitlana Lukyanchyk. Someone is trying to resuscitate her. But the wounds are so extensive that there’s no way to even apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Someone shouts that all the children survived. But Oksana doesn’t believe it. She watches as the doctor’s body is covered with a blanket. Somewhere under the rubble is her Solomiya. She howls in pain.

Later, Anna would replay that moment in her mind hundreds of times. She only remembers the noise and everything swirling as if an earthquake had begun. Then the film cuts off. The next image: the corridor, terrified children, sobbing mothers, the ceiling on the floor, and bloodied nurses.

All rooms were destroyed. Windows blown out by the blast fell on the beds, infusion pumps, monitors, and everything sliced by shrapnel. Only one thought pulses in her head: what next? Leukemia patients must receive medication continuously. Antibiotics, antivirals, painkillers, fluids. Some were supposed to have chemotherapy, but now their catheters are torn out. Each hour lost increases the risk to their lives.

The lifts aren't working. Evacuation is dramatic. Children can’t go down on their own. Someone is vomiting. Someone has deep wounds from shards of glass. Someone can’t stand on their own feet.

Minutes pass. Volunteers arrive in the building. They help carry the children, the surviving drips.

Other mothers help Oksana escape it: Solomiya has already been pulled out! They’ve taken her to the shelter in the cardiology unit.

Oksana runs. In the shelter, the cries of children and injured nurses. She checks each bed but doesn’t find her daughter. Someone says to check the administrative building. That’s where all the injured children were taken.

She rushes again. She immediately spots Solomiya. She’s lying on a couch, with four paramedics standing over her. Her heart skips a beat. Her daughter isn’t moving.

Oksana runs closer. She sees her daughter’s face, pale as chalk. She’s all dusty, with blood under her eye. Tears fill Oksana’s eyes. She can’t utter a word. She laughs and cries. She’s alive. It’s a miracle!

Outside, it’s like an anthill. Hundreds of ordinary people rush to Okhmatdyt. They bring water, food, sweets. They form human chains. Some pass supplies. Other bricks and debris. Doctors in bloody smocks clear rubble.

Directors of other hospitals quickly arrive. They organize beds and transport for the most severe oncology patients in the following hours.

In the ambulance, Anna monitors Serhij's condition. His fate hangs in the balance. Will he catch an infection? Will he have the transplant? The boy feels unwell. He has nausea and severe headaches. Painkillers aren’t working.

The alarms wail again in the city. Phones are burning up. Anna reads the news but can’t believe it. Three hours after the attack on the children’s hospital, the Russians destroyed a maternity ward in Kyiv. There are dead and injured.

On the morning of the next day, the city headed to work. Crowds poured into the underground and spilled out at bus stops. The sun blazed mercilessly. The air smelled of melting asphalt. As usual, but in a crushing silence. A choking sense of injustice. What now? Harsh response from the West? More weapons, Patriots? Or just outrage?

Within a few hours, the Russians launched 40 missiles. They attacked Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, and Pokrovsk. They killed 47 people, almost 200 were injured.

They destroyed apartment blocks, business centres, and two private clinics. They devastated an entire quarter near the crowded Lukyanivska metro station.

One of the missiles hit directly in the toxicology unit where Oksana and Solomiya were. Anna's unit, located several hundred metres higher, was shredded by shrapnel and the shockwave. Similarly damaged was the children’s surgery unit.

At the time of the hospital hit, there were over 600 children in the hospital.

Solomiya constantly talks about that day. That she couldn't breathe, that there was rubble everywhere. She was very scared when the ceiling crumbled. Oksana listens, and it dawns on her that the impossible has happened. The dialysis machines saved the children. They’re tall and heavy. They stopped falling debris and slabs. The staff says they were undamaged. They will probably be used again. Someday. Because the toxicology unit is beyond rebuilding. A modern building is set to be constructed in its place.

Serhij’s operation and the other three patients went ahead. Miraculously, the cell bank wasn’t damaged. Moreover, the labs didn’t stop working even on the day of the attack. Anna and the other doctors got all the test results on time.

“No one left their workplace, they just did what they had to do. That’s why the children’s therapy continued,” says Anna.

In three days, most of the rubble was cleared. Broken windows covered, glass shards swept up. A week later, the less damaged units took their patients back.

What’s next? Anna answers with stoic calm:

“The Russians have attacked hospitals, shopping centres, and cultural centres many times before. This time it happened to us. That’s the price of living in Ukraine. And I have to accept that it might happen again.”