The real worry for Ukraine’s allies as beach strike on Russian civilians marks a shift in the war
The gentle splash of breaking waves on a resort beach and the laughter of children having innocent fun is overcome by the screech and sound breaking crack of an explosion. Seven people dead – three of them are children.
This was the scene on Monday in the Russian Black Sea town of Gelendzhik where, even if every adult killed and all 40 of those injured were wide-eyed fans of Vladimir Putin and part of his war machine, the children were innocent.
It was the sort of attack that if carried out by Russia against Ukraine would have sparked international outrage and allegations of war crimes by targeting civilian areas.
“What happened today was a deliberate attack by the Kyiv regime on the civilian population, which has no connection whatsoever to military infrastructure,” Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of southern Krasnodar region, which includes the resort, said in a statement on Telegram.
Ukraine does not have a policy off attacking civilian targets.
Russia does.
But as Kyiv steps up its war inside the Russian Federation there have been, and will be, more civilian deaths. These may be dismissed with a shrug by many Ukrainians who have lived with Russia’s targeting of schools, hospitals, energy systems, trains, cafes, and hotels since February 2022.
Ukrainians will feel little sympathy for the dead in Russia because they know of the “hunting safaris” that trainee drone pilots enjoy in the city of Kherson. They learn to kill by targeting civilians on the city’s streets in First Person View training runs.
In many Russian attacks, including the massacres in Buch and in Irpin in the early months of the war on the outskirts of Kyiv, there is no question that ordinary Ukrainians were, are, and will be deliberately targeted in a very first person way.
Kyiv is taking the war deep into Russia, though. That means that Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and every one of his military staff, are comfortable with killing civilians – even by accident – because the innocent will be seen as collateral damage by his allies.
Ukraine had a home-grown long range guided missile programme. These weapons are often described as “drones” but, as with Russian “drones”, most are not piloted aircraft carrying explosives but flying bombs with on-board navigation systems.
They are accurate. But they are not infallible. And they are often shot down.
Ukraine’s longest range missile, the Flamingo FP-5, has a range its manufacturers claim of about 3,000km.
More importantly, for Russians under its long flight path, it can carry 1,150kg of high explosives.
