The Youngest Was 8 Years Old: Russia's Deadliest Strike in a Month Hits Pryluky in Its Sleep

At around 6 in the morning, while the city was still asleep, a Russian missile struck a residential building in Pryluky in the Chernihiv region. At least 13 people were killed, among them 4 children. Rescuers also recovered their bodies from the rubble of the building. The youngest among the dead was 8 years old, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhovskyi said. The city was hit shortly before waking up, at the hour when a place is most defenseless. At that time of day, you expect the alarm clock, not a concrete ceiling collapsing on top of you. No Russian attack has killed more people in a month.

A missile strike in Pryluky. One of the hits simply went straight into an occupied apartment building. In the morning, while people were still asleep.” That is how Viacheslav Chaus, head of the Chernihiv regional administration, described it. Within an hour, the death toll in his updates rose from 9 to 13, from 3 children to 4. The rubble of the 5-story residential building is still being cleared, so the number could rise further. More than 50 people are reported injured, 3 of them in very serious condition in the hospital. Behind every update is a person someone in Pryluky is calling who will never answer again. With every hour the excavator clears away the rubble, the toll from this morning can still grow.

Regional police reported the shelling by Russian forces early in the morning. A multi-story residential building and a center for children and young people were hit, along with a business whose name was not disclosed. Even in the first hours, there were reports of dead and injured. In a place like that, children learn to mix colors and sing songs. An army that puts a family's sleep and children's drawings on the same target list is not fighting a war against soldiers.

Across Ukraine, the country was hit through the night and into the morning. At least 19 people were killed in the Russian strikes, most of them in Pryluky. At first, the nationwide death toll was reported at 15, but with the new figures from the city, it rose to 19. Death has taken on a rhythm. On September 27, 14 people were killed across the country, and on October 6, 13. There had not been this many deaths in a single place in a month. Each of these days fills a line in a statistic hardly anyone reads anymore, until a number gets so large that it takes on a name. This Tuesday, that name is Pryluky.

The shelling was nothing like a stray shell. Night after night and morning after morning, Russia targets the country where people live, their stairwells and their sleep. These strikes are aimed at the will of an entire people, and that will is supposed to be broken in their beds. Ukraine buries its children and does not bow. For years, this country has been fighting a war it did not choose, counting its dead anew at every dawn. In every cleared stairwell lies an answer louder than any missile.

In Moscow, all of this is called a special military operation. The target that morning was a stairwell before people woke up. An 8-year-old child is not a front line, a sleeping neighborhood is not a military position. Between the words from Moscow and the rubble in Pryluky lies the entire distance separating a lie from the truth. Firing missiles at sleeping people and calling it defense mangles language the same way it mangles houses. Words are supposed to cover up what the rubble lays bare. The sun rises over Pryluky that day, and in one residential building, no one who slept there yesterday will ever wake to it again.