2023-07-04 22:39:00
“Please, do not refer to that restaurant”: that was our first reaction to the Russian missile attack on the Ria pizzeria in Kramatorsk, which caused 13 deaths and more than 60 injuries. Kramatorsk is the largest, safest and most accessible city near the front line of the war in Ukraine. Before the invasion, the city had about 200,000 inhabitants; now there are 80,000 left, including soldiers who come to replenish forces, volunteers and journalists. Despite its size, the range of services is limited, so a well-managed central restaurant, with quality Wi-Fi, space for meetings and fast service, will always be full. I remember Ria’s young waiters always offering perfect service, aware that everyone was in a hurry. Some of them are among the dead.
The second reaction was: who was in the pizzeria at the time of the attack? A diner, Victoria Amelina, a famous Ukrainian writer, was seriously injured. This Monday we learned that she had died after being hospitalized for five days. Amelina was investigating Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine. Last Sunday, the day before her trip to Kramatorsk, she was at the kyiv Arsenal book festival moderating a panel on “What kind of crime is Russia committing?” It was me who invited her. We prepare together, talking about how difficult it is for us to travel, and how we arm ourselves with the strength and courage to carry on. We felt defiant. The book festival was our way of celebrating the Ukrainian resistance.
Knowing that a friend is one of the victims numbs you, makes you feel powerless. You can’t stop thinking: what if they hadn’t been there? The Ukrainian government has identified the Russian agent who they suspect reported the exact location of the restaurant. Everyone knew that it was always full of civilians, journalists, soldiers on leave. High-ranking army officers were unlikely to be there. It is not a military objective.
The head of the Duma Defense Committee, Colonel General Andrei Kartapolov, applauded the attack on Kramatorsk in a prominent propaganda program on the state channel Russia-1: “Hats off to those who planned it, to those who carried it out. My old military heart rejoices when I see how many corpses of those boys are recovered from the rubble, sometimes with tattoos, sometimes with emblems. Among the bodies are those of 14-year-old twins Yulia and Anna Aksenchenko.
The attack on the station
In April I was in the restaurant. It was the first anniversary of the April 8, 2022 attack on the Kramatorsk train station, one of the deadliest of the invasion: 3,000 people were at the station, 63 of whom were killed, and more than 100 injured. We screened a documentary about the massacre. As part of Reckoning Project, which documents Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, we echoed what Ukrainian human rights organizations and prosecutors had already said: that despite the Kremlin’s claims that it was targeting military equipment at the station, the truth is that it was a direct attack on civilians by Russia. The weapons used were Tochka-U missiles, banned by more than 100 countries, which are designed to cause serious injury to people, and would not have been chosen if the objective had been to destroy the weapons arsenal.
At the time, the world was focused on the Russian atrocities in Bucha, and the residents of Kramatorsk had to deal with the trauma alone. When we showed the documentary in a secure basement in Kramatorsk to the witnesses – including the railway and rescue staff, the police, the mayor and the governor – it was clear how affected they were, even a year later. It was the most horrible day of their lives.
As we dined afterwards at the pizzeria, watching people chat and eat, we were glad to see life and normality return. After the liberation of Izium, in September 2022, the risk of occupation of Kramatorsk, 64 kilometers to the south, had decreased. The city was recovering.
Just a year before the Kramatorsk restaurant attack, Russia attacked a shopping center in Kremenchuk – far from the front line – killing 21 people. Ukrainian prosecutors identified that the types of missiles used in this case were used in other civilian attacks that took place later, killing at least 21 people near Odessa and 46 sleeping in their homes in Dnipro. This allows us to appreciate a pattern of brutal and selective attacks against civilians.
a solid case
For legal experts, an accumulation of evidence like this leads to more action, to a stronger case. On the other hand, for the media the opposite occurs. The more frequent these attacks are, the more attention declines as they normalize.
In conversations with international media while documenting war crimes committed by Russia, I tell them that journalists and editors – intrigued by “a new type of crime” – get bored when I mention the victims of missile attacks. “But isn’t war like that?” they ask.
Russia has managed to normalize these missile attacks against civilians, and although it is possible to identify the type of weapon and show that its objective was to kill civilians, lawyers are hesitant in the absence of public pressure.
Attacks against civilians are treated as inevitable tragedies of war. But they are also crimes that must be investigated, whatever our political views and position on this war.
In answering Amelina’s questions at the roundtable on war crimes, colleagues focused on accountability for these crimes. As a Ukrainian who, like many others these days, feels helpless, stunned and devastated because someone we know and love falls victim to one of these attacks, I focus on prevention. We must demand an investigation so that, instead of a general’s salute, the Russian military receives an arrest warrant for these types of attacks. We cannot restore life to those who have already died, but at least this plague of impunity can be punished. And, just maybe, another attack on civilians will be prevented.
Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist and co-founder of the Reckoning Project.
Translation by Emma Reverter
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