Packages with the help of the Red Cross were placed along the roadside in Sergeevka, a small town in southeastern Ukraine.. A man was unloading plastic bags with the World Central Kitchen logo from a truck whose windshield was completely shattered.. On the other side of the square, people were sorting through second-hand clothes brought in by a Ukrainian charity.. Some of them pointed to the mother behind the two boys.. They were lucky they weren't at home when their apartment was destroyed.. They are alive but have lost everything.

Woman holding a pair of baby jeans. Perhaps they will suit one of her sons. Three days before, on the first of July, Russian planes launched three powerful strikes on Sergeevka. One of the rockets hit the nine-story building. The other two - in a sanatorium and a boarding house.

“By the time I arrived, most of the rubble of concrete blocks, broken glass, burnt metal and tiles had already been dismantled.. Only residents remained who survived and did not end up in the hospital, and now they were trying to figure out what to do next, ”writes American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Applebaum on the pages of The Atlantic..

If someone has not heard of Sergeevka, this is not surprising. This is a very modest resort town located in the Dnieper Delta next to the bay where the river flows into the Black Sea.. And if someone has not heard about the shelling of Sergeevka, this is also not surprising. Russian strikes on random places far from the front and without any military significance occur every day in Ukraine. According to prosecutor Alexander Chechitko, who came to Sergeevka to collect evidence, three X-22 missiles hit the city at night. These are anti-ship missiles, the production of which took place in the 1960s.. True, there were no warships in Sergeevka. And no military installations at all.

But even if there were strategic assets in Sergeevka, the use of inaccurate Kh-22 missiles against residential areas is still a war crime, a deliberate strike against civilians.. On this basis, the investigation was opened immediately after the shelling of Sergeevka. Chechitko is part of a team from Odessa that has been trained for such investigations, as well as a special online course.. He carries around a folder with instructions, forms and lists of everything Ukraine needs to find out before filing a complaint with the International Criminal Court.. A Ukrainian prosecutor and colleagues are checking the ground for missile fragments, photographing damage, consulting with military officials who tracked enemy aircraft with special radars, and recording data on 22 dead and 39 wounded.. Investigators already know which Russian unit the pilot belonged to and from whom he received the order to attack a peaceful Ukrainian city.

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The big unanswered question is whether the term " In fact, the war in Ukraine is already different in nature from other conflicts that have taken place in the 21st century.. In the east of the country, soldiers on both sides of the already well-defined front line fight for control of the territory.. But in other regions of Ukraine, something else is happening that looks so much like a war, like numerous acts of terrorism.. According to the US Penal Code, a terrorist attack is an "

“If terrorism is defined as a campaign of intimidation through the use of violence, then the shelling of Sergeevka was terrorism. So did the attack on Kremenchuk on June 27 in central Ukraine, where another Kh-22 anti-ship missile destroyed a shopping mall, killing at least 20 people.. Terrorism can also describe the constant use of cluster munitions against residential areas of Kharkiv, bombs disintegrating into hundreds of fragments, resulting in death and injury, leaving marks in courtyards and playgrounds.. Terrorism is also the right word to describe the strike on Clock Yar on July 10, where several rockets destroyed a five-story apartment building, and rescue services spent many hours to get people out of the rubble, ”Applebaum writes..

In all these places, Russia did not pursue traditional military goals.. There is no ground offensive in Sergeevka or Kremenchug. Russian attempt to occupy Kharkiv failed a few months ago. There is no scenario in which an apartment building in Chasovoy Yar threatened Russia or the Russians, not to mention the Russian army. Meanwhile, the purpose of the strikes on these cities was to cause fear and anger among local residents and Ukrainians throughout the country.. Perhaps the goal is to convince Ukraine to stop resistance, by analogy with the bombing of Britain during World War II..

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But in reality, shelling civilians has the exact opposite effect.. Over time, many Ukrainians got used to the attacks and became more willing to endure them.. In the Odessa City Garden, people continue to drink coffee and do not even interrupt conversations when the air raid siren sounds.

But if the bombing is not part of the " On the contrary, they pursue several whole. However, one of them is to convince people to leave, become refugees, and at the same time a burden and even a political problem for Ukraine's neighbors.. Also, by shelling peaceful cities, Russia is trying to make Ukrainians poor, prevent them from rebuilding their country, weaken Ukraine and convince people who have gone abroad never to return home.. Who wants to return to a country where every night bombs fall on another residential building or shopping center? Who will invest in places with broken roofs and windows? Spreading such doubts is a classic goal of terrorists..

“We Americans and Europeans are used to thinking that terrorism is something to do with bombs made from mineral fertilizers or other homemade weapons.. And terrorists are marginal extremists operating within marginal gangs.. When we talk about state-sponsored terrorism, we usually mean clandestine groups funded or recognized by states.. For example, this is how Iran supports Hezbollah. But Russia's war against Ukraine blurs the distinction between terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, and war crimes.. Because there is nothing secret, conspiratorial or marginal in the bombing of Sergeevka, Kremenchug or Kharkov,” Applebaum writes..

She notes that Russia - a legitimate and recognized world power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council - resorts to constant, repeated and obvious terrorist violence against civilians living far from combat areas.. These attacks are not a mistake or an accident.. Aircraft with missiles can be tracked on radar. Sometimes Moscow publishes its objections, claiming that reports of the destruction of the shopping center are " She never apologizes. The Russian army does not punish the killers of civilians. On the contrary, Vladimir Putin awarded medals to the brigade that committed many atrocities in Bucha.

The truth is that Russian missiles hit not only random people, shops, medical institutions, pets.. They also destroy the entire apparatus of international law relating to war crimes, human rights and terrorism.. With every bomb the Russian military deliberately drops on residential buildings, and with every missile aimed at a school or hospital, they demonstrate their distaste for the global institutions that Russia was once so eager to join.. Evidence-gathering Ukrainian and international prosecutors will eventually be able to file not one or two, but thousands of war crimes cases. Russian war against Ukraine is unprecedented. Because justice must also be unprecedented.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russia a " And other influential officials, including members of the US Senate, called on the United States and Europe to officially assign such a status to the Russian Federation.. This will have serious legal implications for all Russian companies that are not yet under sanctions.. The main argument against such a move is not trivial: Russia is too big to be cut off from the world economy or excluded from international dialogue.. But it's also important to call a spade a spade and look for ways to deal with them.. Russia now commits terrorist attacks every day. This will have serious implications for the fragile structure of international laws and practices designed to prevent such acts.. And not just for laws and institutions. The truth is that the Russian army is attacking the values \u200b\u200bon which these international institutions are based, the principles and even the emotions that prompted people to create all these organizations.. Empathy, a sense of humanity, the instinct that children do not deserve to be victims of war, the understanding that people who do not harm you and your country have the right to a normal life - all these moral concepts are rejected when the army is determined to create senseless, cruel personal tragedies.. The shelling of Sergeevka alone created a lot of such tragedies.