The Chornobyl Museum in Podil, one of Kyiv’s central districts, was destroyed during a massive Russian missile attack on May 24.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
One of the few displays still hanging from the walls of the Chornobyl National Museum in Kyiv warns of a “new threat” to Ukraine, in the form of the Russian invasion that began in 2022. That threat materialized last week, in the form of a missile that blew off one wall of the museum building and much of its roof.
Few words carry as much symbolic weight in Ukraine as Chornobyl, which is why staff at the museum commemorating the worst nuclear disaster in history believe it was intentionally targeted in the May 24 attack.
“Our museum is known all over the world. They knew it was here. They knew what they were doing,” said Anastasiya Korchemna, a 26-year-old guide at the facility.
Ukrainian civilians are caught up in the grim pattern of Putin’s war
More than four years into a war that shows no signs of ending any time soon, both Russia and Ukraine appear to be escalating their attacks on symbols that their enemy holds dear.
As Ms. Korchemna was speaking inside the ruins of the Chornobyl Museum on Wednesday, an oil terminal was burning more than 1,000 kilometres away in St. Petersburg, after a Ukrainian drone attack. A thick column of black smoke rose over Russia’s second-largest city – President Vladimir Putin’s hometown – just as delegates were arriving for the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Both Russia and Ukraine appear to be escalating their attacks on symbols that their enemy holds dear.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
The SPIEF, a gathering sometimes billed as the “Russian Davos,” is one of the most important events on Russia’s political calendar. Mr. Putin is scheduled to deliver the keynote address on Friday.
Asked about Wednesday’s attack on St. Petersburg, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s response “will be systematic. It has already been systematic.”
For both attacks, it seems the ultimate target was public morale – to hearten and to demoralize, depending on the perspective.
Russia launches massive attack on Ukraine, killing and wounding scores of civilians
At the Chornobyl Museum, rain fell through the missing parts of the roof on Wednesday, dampening maps and photographs that told the story of the 1986 nuclear meltdown. Thirty people, most of them first responders who were ordered into the burning power plant, died in the first days after that explosion. Thousands more have died, and continue to die, from cancers linked to the radiation that was released.
The impact of the disaster was compounded by the Soviet leadership’s attempts to cover up what had happened. The catastrophe, and the way it was handled by the Kremlin, drove a permanent wedge between Kyiv and Moscow, and catalyzed a protest movement that helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union.
Vitalina Martynovska, director of the Chornobyl Museum, said tens of exhibits – including some she said proved Moscow’s culpability in the meltdown – had been destroyed in the missile attack. The museum, which is located in the historic Podil district of Kyiv, had just reopened on April 26, the 40th anniversary of the disaster, after an 18-month renovation.
Vitalina Matynovska, 40, director of the Chernobyl Museum, says tens of exhibits – including some she believes proved Moscow’s culpability in the meltdown – were destroyed in the missile attack.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
The museum was one of several Kyiv landmarks affected by the drone and missile barrage on May 24. The National Art Museum was damaged, as were several theatres, along with the headquarters of the country’s Foreign Ministry. Three people were killed. Twenty-two more were killed in another mass attack on Monday: six in Kyiv and 16 in the hard-hit central city of Dnipro.
“It’s a classic bluster and influence operation,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, which advises President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office on military issues. The campaign of Russian missile and drone strikes, Mr. Bielieskov said, seemed to be aimed at undermining Ukrainian morale while convincing the Russian public that the war was going better than it is.
The Russian invasion appears to have stalled, at least for the moment. Heavy fighting continues along the 1,000-kilometre-long front line that runs through south and southeastern Ukraine, but Russian troops have actually lost slightly more ground than they have captured since the start of this year.
Eyewitness footage shows smoke columns rising into the air and blasts ringing out after Ukrainian drones struck an oil export terminal in St. Petersburg hours before President Vladimir Putin's annual economic forum got under way, in an attempt to embarrass the Kremlin chief and show how vulnerable Russia's big cities are.
Ukrainian drones, meanwhile, have continued to strike at military and industrial targets around Russia. Fear of a Ukrainian drone attack is believed to have caused the Kremlin to dramatically scale back its annual Victory Day parade on May 9, which is usually a showcase of Russia’s military might and national pride.
The Kremlin has warned that its forces will continue to target Kyiv, and has advised foreign embassies to leave the Ukrainian capital. None have announced plans to withdraw.
While the war on the ground seems deadlocked, Russia retains a major advantage in the tit-for-tat air war: an arsenal of ballistic missiles that Ukraine’s air defences have struggled to intercept.
The museum was one of several Kyiv landmarks affected by the drone and missile barrage on May 24.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Bielieskov said that Russia had used more ballistic missiles than usual in recent attacks, taking advantage of Ukraine’s growing shortage of the PAC-3 interceptors fired by U.S.-made Patriot anti-missile systems.
Mr. Bielieskov said the situation would worsen unless the shortage is resolved. The United States and its allies around the Middle East used more than 1,000 of the interceptors over the first two weeks of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, outstripping annual PAC-3 production by Lockheed Martin, the only company that produces them.
“What will happen in the second half of the year is an open question,” Mr. Bielieskov said.
Ms. Martynovska, director of the Chornobyl Museum, connected Russia’s willingness to fire missiles into a residential neighbourhood to the indifference toward human life that led to the nuclear disaster 40 years ago.
“They committed a crime in 1986, and they were never punished for what they did,” she said. “When the perpetrator is not punished, they will commit more and more crimes.”
Across Ukraine people have grown accustomed to the wail of sirens. For 6-year-old Natalia, who narrowly escaped a blast that hit her apartment in the latest major attack on Kyiv earlier this week, the alerts bring a sense of panic that she did not experience before.
Reuters