‘Please, not that place”: that was our first reaction to the Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk’s Ria pizza restaurant, which took 13 lives and wounded more than 60 people. Kramatorsk is the biggest, safest and most accessible town close to the Russian-Ukrainian frontline. Before the full-scale invasion, up to 200,000 people lived there; 80,000 now remain, including military personnel coming for a break, volunteers and journalists. Still, the services on offer are limited, so a central, well-run restaurant with quality wifi, space for meetings and quick meals will always be crowded. I remember Ria’s young waiters always providing perfect service, knowing that everybody was in a rush. Some of them are now among the dead.
The second thought after this new attack was: who was there? One visitor, Victoria Amelina, a famous Ukrainian writer, was left in a critical condition. We learned yesterday that she passed away after five days in hospital. Amelina was a war crimes researcher – last Sunday, a day before her Kramatorsk trip, she was at the Arsenal book festival in Kyiv moderating a panel on “What kind of crime is Russia committing?” at my invitation. Beforehand we prepared together, chatting about how hard it is for us to travel outside Ukraine, and how we drum up the strength and spirit to carry on. We felt defiant. The book festival was our celebration of Ukrainian resilience.
Reading that a friend is among the victims makes you feel numb, powerless. You can’t stop thinking: what if they hadn’t been there? The Ukrainian government has identified the Russian agent whom they suspect of reporting the exact location of the restaurant. Everybody knew that it was always full of civilians, media, military on leave. But it was very unlikely that senior commanders would have been there. It is not a military target.
Speaking on a major propaganda talkshow on the state-run Russia-1 Channel, the head of the Duma defence committee, Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov, saluted the attack on Kramatorsk, saying: “I take my hat off to those who planned it, who carried it out. My old military heart rejoices when I see how many of these kids’ bodies are being dug up, sometimes with tattoos, sometimes with emblems.” Among the bodies there are those of the 14-year-old twins Yulia and Anna Aksenchenko.
I visited the restaurant this April after the anniversary screening of our film about the attack on Kramatorsk train station on 8 April 2022, still one of the deadliest of the invasion: 3,000 people were at the station, 63 of whom died, and more than 100 were wounded. As part of the Reckoning Project, which documents war crimes, we echoed what human rights organisations and Ukrainian prosecutors had already said: that despite Kremlin claims that it was targeting military equipment at the station, this was a direct strike on civilians by Russia. The weapons used were Tochka-U missiles, banned by more than 100 nations, which are designed to cause severe injuries to humans, and would not have been chosen had the intention been to destroy weapons.
At the time, the world was focused on the Russian atrocities in Bucha, and the residents of Kramatorsk were left alone with their wounds. Showing the film in a safe basement in Kramatorsk to witnesses – including the railway and rescue workers, the police, the mayor and the governor – it was clear how hurt they were even a year on. This has been the most horrific day of their lives.
As we ate in the pizza restaurant afterwards, observing people chatting and eating, we enjoyed seeing the return of life and normalcy. After the liberation of Izium, in September 2022, the risk of occupation of Kramatorsk, 40 miles to the south, had shrunk away. The city was healing.
Exactly a year before the attack on the restaurant in Kramatorsk, Russia attacked a shopping mall in Kremenchuk – far from the frontline – killing 21 people, mainly employees. We’ve just published the investigation: the Ukrainian prosecutors identified that the types of missiles used here were used in subsequent civilian attacks, killing at least 21 people near Odesa and 46 sleeping at home in Dnipro. A picture is building of brutal, targeted civilian attacks.
For legal experts, a buildup of evidence like this leads to more action, a stronger case. It’s the opposite for the media. The more often these attacks happen, the more attention wanes. Talking to international media while working on war crimes documentation, I mention how reporters and editors – intrigued by “a newer type of crime” – are getting bored as long as I mention victims of the missile attacks. “But isn’t that just how war works?” they ask.
Russia has managed to normalise these civilian missile strikes, and even though it’s possible to identify the type of weapon and prove that something was a civilian target, lawyers are hesitant to engage when public pressure is lacking.
Strikes against civilians are treated as inevitable tragedies of the war. But they are also crimes that must be investigated, whatever our political views and stance on the conflict.
Answering Amelina’s questions at the panel about war crimes, colleagues focused on accountability for these crimes. As a Ukrainian who, like many others these days, feels powerless, numb and devastated because someone we know and love is injured, I am focused on prevention. We must demand an investigation so that instead of a salute from a general Russian servicemen will receive an arrest warrant for these kinds of attacks. We can’t save those who have already died, but at least this plague of impunity may be punished. And, just maybe, it will prevent another attack.
Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist, and co-founder of the Reckoning Project
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