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Shevchenko Park in central Kyiv is a tranquil public garden, where the trees are turning golden against the city’s blue, autumnal skies. Presiding over the park is a statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet, persecuted by the Russians in the 19th century for writing in Ukrainian.
But on Monday that sense of calm was violently shattered when a series of missiles hit the city centre. War had returned to what had been, for several months, a mostly peaceful – if anxious – city.
It was around 8.15am local time (0615 BST), at rush hour, that a main road junction next to the park, near Taras Shevchenko National University’s science library, was hit. The rocket blast destroyed three cars, killing several occupants. Images from the immediate aftermath showed burning vehicles and first aiders treating the wounded.
Another missile hit the children’s playground of Shevchenko Park itself, ploughing up the paving stones, bending the play equipment and snapping a nearby tree. Further missiles fell near the main train station, near Troieshchyna power plant on the left bank of the Dnieper, and at a footbridge across the river.
The novelist Victoria Amelina, who since the start of the 2022 Russian invasion has also been a war crimes researcher, was in the city centre when the missiles hit, having just arrived on the Lviv-Kyiv sleeper train.
Waiting in line for a cab, she heard the sound of at least two explosions. As she took a taxi home, she saw “black clouds and debris” near what is informally known as the Klitschko Bridge, named for Kyiv’s mayor. The glass-bottomed pedestrian and cyclists’ bridge, spanning the Dnieper, opened in 2019 and is often busy with saunterers and sightseers.
“This is not a strategic target,” she said. “If they hit this bridge it is a weird revenge for the Crimea bridge – this is a bridge where the tourists walk.”
Her route next took her past the road junction at Shevchenko Park, which had been hit minutes earlier. “It looked like they were either trying to hit the university or the statue of Taras Shevchenko,” she said.
