The brutal war in Ukraine is now over a year old. While estimates of the numbers of civilians killed and injured vary, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has estimated that 8,317 civilians have been killed and a further 13,892 injured from the beginning of the war on February 24 2022 to March 20 2023, the most recent date for which figures are available. On March 16 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it had recorded 859 attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine.
Russian attacks on civilians and the most vulnerable targets, including maternity hospitals, have been a feature of the conflict from its beginning. On March 9 2022, the now-infamous Russian missile attack destroyed Maternity Hospital No.3 in the besieged city of Mariupol. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack constituted a war crime, adding:
What kind of a country is this, the Russian Federation, that it is afraid of hospitals and maternity wards and destroys them?
