for Irina Dmitrieva, her four -year -old daughter Liza was the center of her world.
For Russian military commanders, she was only collateral damage in her last fatal attack in Ukraine.
Liza was killed by a rocket attack on Thursday when she and her mother went back from her speech therapy course to the winning place in the center of Winnyzja.
But why the Kremlin decided to attack a city in the west of Ukraine that is hundreds of kilometers behind the front line.
Liza, four, was killed by a rocket attack when she and her mother went back from her speech therapy course
Vinnytsia is a city with 370,000 inhabitants, which is famous for its relaxed provincial atmosphere and its location with a view of the southern bug. It is much closer to Romania and Moldova than the distant Donbass region, the latest combat area between Ukraine and Russia.
and yet the war has now come to the center of Winnyzja. At least 23 people died in the attack in which Liza was killed. Irina, her mother, lost a leg.
The United Nations estimated that almost 5,000 civilians were killed since Mr. Putin ordered his invasion in Ukraine on February 24, mainly through indiscriminately shelling of cities near the front lines.
But in the past three weeks, rocket attacks on civil goals indicate far from the Donbass that the Kremlin may follow a broader form of psychological warfare.
In the event of a rocket attack on a residential building in Kiev on June 26, when most people still slept, one person was killed. The next day, two rockets met in Kremenchuk, further down on the Dnjeper, on a sunny afternoon, the most busy time of the day, a shopping center and killed 16 people.
rockets then met two living blocks near Odessa and killed 21 people, and at least 44 people were killed in the small town of Chars Yar in Donbass last weekend when two Russian rockets destroyed a block of apartments.
Since the end of June there have also been rocket hits at universities, hotels and apartment blocks in cities in the whole of Ukraine that are outside the main war area, including Mykolajiw, Kharkiw, Zaporizhzhya and Odessa.
The Russian Ministry of Defense insisted that it only targeted military locations, and after the attacks on Winnyzja it said that high -precision missiles had hit the “House of Officers”.
Technically, the Russian Ministry of Defense is right. The rockets of the Kremlin hit the House of Officers in Winnyzja, but it is a concert hall from the Soviet period. It had no military value, just a cultural.A pop band under the direction of Roxolana, one of the most famous singers in Ukraine, had practiced for a concert this weekend when the rocket hit. Several members of the band were injured in the attack. One was killed.
"This is terrorism," said Dmytro Kuleba, Foreign Minister of Ukraine. "The intentional murder of civilians to spread fear. Russia is a terrorist."
"This was a terrorist attack, a deliberate attempt to create a safe feeling for Ukrainian civilians in Ukraine," said James Rushton, an independent security analyst based in Great Britain.
Ukrainian officials said that this psychological warfare aimed to undermine morality to show people that the Kremlin can hand out arbitrarily and suddenly, no matter where they live in Ukraine.
However, not everyone agrees. A Russian defense analyst from Moscow, who is generally considered impartial, said that a faulty steering may be the reason that rockets have hit the concert hall. "The United States had some of the same problems in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
But Russia has the form of considering civilians as collateral damage and as a pressure point to change the dynamics during the war.
in Chechnya in the late 1990s and early 2000s and in Syria in 2015 and 2016, the Russian military bombed cities in rubble and ashes and civilians.
and Russia was already charged with war crimes in Ukraine. His soldiers tortured, murdered and raped people who had lived in commuter cities north of Kiev when they occupied them in March.
Liza died in the rocket attack, which hit a parking lot in Winnyzja on Thursday
It was also accused of having sent hundreds of thousands of refugees from the occupied areas of Donbass to Russia and to have bombed train stations full of refugees and hospitals.
Now the Kremlin has started to sprinkle fear deeper into Ukraine.
This fear will undoubtedly be difficult for the strikes in which Liza and 22 other people were killed, which is undoubtedly difficult for Winnyzja.
on Instagram showed a video that was uploaded just a few hours before landing the first rocket, smiling Liza as she pushed her stroller. A later photo showed the tiny, crumpled body of the toddler, which lay next to the same stroller. Your blood had stained the patch.
A concert planned for the end of July in the House of Officers in Winnyzja had promised an evening with Ukrainian-patriotic songs that "no Russian can prevent". The House of Officers is now a charred ruin and the concert has been canceled.
Source: The Telegraph
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