Russian forces attacked a hospital in central Kherson with a drone on August 7, injuring four female healthcare workers, local military authorities reported.
The Kherson City Military Administration stated on Telegram that Russian occupiers launched the drone strike around 6:20 p.m. at a hospital grounds in the city center. The administration reported that four women aged 53, 56, 65, and 67 sustained mine explosive injuries and concussions. They received initial medical care and will continue their treatment on an outpatient basis.
Pattern of attacks on civilian infrastructure
Ukrainian authorities and international organizations qualify Russian attacks across all regions of Ukraine as targeted war crimes. Russian forces regularly strike cities and civilian infrastructure using attack drones, missiles, guided aerial bombs, and multiple launch rocket systems.
Legal experts, genocide researchers, and human rights defenders state that attacks on essential public utilities and healthcare facilities are evidence of genocidal actions. They emphasize that shelling power, heating, water supply, communications, and medical centers aims to deprive civilians of necessary living conditions.
Rights experts say Russian actions during the full-scale war meet the legal definitions of genocide. They point to statements by the Russian president and government officials asserting that Ukrainians do not exist as an ethnic group, describing Ukraine as artificially created, and claiming that those who disagree must be destroyed.
Evidence of genocidal actions cited by experts
Experts also cite public calls to destroy Ukrainians alongside targeted attacks on civilian life support systems. In occupied areas, Russian forces carry out the persecution and killing of individuals holding pro-Ukrainian views, as well as the destruction of intelligentsia including teachers, artists, and cultural figures.
Other cited crimes include implementing educational systems in occupied schools aimed at altering children's identity, and deporting parentless children to Russia for the same purpose. Experts also report the removal and destruction of Ukrainian books from libraries, museum looting, and the targeted theft of ancient historical artifacts.
United Nations genocide convention definition
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Today, 149 state parties are required to prevent and punish genocide during both peacetime and war.
The convention defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Recognized signs include killing group members, causing serious bodily harm, deliberately creating living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, forcibly transferring children, and publicly inciting such acts.
Russian leadership denies that its military carries out targeted strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian cities and villages. Russian officials maintain that their forces do not kill civilians or destroy hospitals, schools, kindergartens, energy facilities, and water infrastructure.
