Parents fear for children's future in wrecked city

ZHYTOMYR • An air raid siren blared and tears filled Mr Vasiliy Kravchuk's eyes as he surveyed the wreckage of the school his six-year-old son was meant to start at next year.

"It's hard, it's very hard," sobbed the 37-year-old who works at the tourism organisation for Zhytomyr, a garrison city west of Kyiv where no tourists now visit. The city with its broad, picturesque river spanned by a suspension bridge has suffered a series of devastating Russian strikes since the start of the war.

The regional maternity hospital was badly damaged by a blast on March 2, while School No. 25 was destroyed on March 4. Zhytomyr has been spared the devastation of cities such as Mariupol in the south, but it remains in Russia's sights as its troops attempt to encircle Kyiv from the west.

"Every day it's 20, 30 times we go to the basement (to shelter). It's difficult because my wife is pregnant, I have a little son," said Mr Kravchuk, wearing a bright pink hoodie and rubbing his eyes. His son had been looking forward to starting at the school, but now it is a pile of concrete, with a shelf full of schoolbooks hanging over a void where a wall used to be.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the "special military operation" launched on Feb 24 was aimed at the "demilitarisation and de-nazification" of Ukraine. But Ukraine's prosecutor-general has said Russia is committing genocide in Mariupol, and many in Zhytomyr believe the violence Moscow has unleashed across the country amounts to the same thing.

"This is indeed genocide of the Ukrainian people," Ms Svitlana Kovalchuk, a 50-year-old chemistry teacher at the school, said during a visit arranged by the Ukrainian government.

"Because the civilians suffer, innocent children suffer, newborn children, children from our school, children from the whole country suffer."

At the Zhytomyr regional maternity centre on the other side of town, mothers cradled their newborn babies in tiny rooms in a sweltering basement where they hid from bombs. The windows of the hospital were blown in by powerful strikes that hit a nearby residential area, leaving the maternity wards unusable.

"They (Russia) want to rip us off of our future," said Ms Nadia Skutelnyk, 29, showing off her four-day-old daughter Stephania's tiny fingers. The hospital has moved most of its equipment underground and has even set up its own operating theatre.

Medical director Olena Ostryiko said she "cannot understand" why "the enemy" bombed so close to the hospital. "Why the civilians, why the children, why the kindergartens, why hospitals, why? I cannot understand. But we know that the enemy's aim is the genocide of Ukrainian people," she said.

One reason may be that they are collateral damage in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Children and parents stroll in the sun and skateboarders rattle down the pavements until the air raid sirens sound, but Zhytomyr is partly an army town.

The maternity hospital is near a military base, while residents said that a building near the school had been used by the army many years ago.

Mayor Sergiy Sukhomlyn said Zhtyomyr was being targeted despite being 70km or 80km from the front line because of its military history.

"Russia very well remembers our famous 95th Brigade, which has been at war since 2014 in Donbass", the eastern Ukrainian region held by pro-Russian separatists, Mr Sukhomlyn told a press conference.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE