Surrounded by body bags – Putin’s ‘war crimes’ only strengthen Ukraine’s resolve
There was an awful near silence as the war crime investigators went about their business and the bodies of the victims were methodically packed into body bags.
We counted at least 15 body bags being loaded one on top of each other into a succession of ambulances. The death toll is higher and includes several children, one a baby just a few months old.
The attack was so swift and so deadly, when we arrived at the scene, many of the victims were still where they had died.
An elderly man’s hand was still clasping his steering wheel, frozen in time, his body slumped sideways onto the passenger seat.
Two young women were laying on the ground outside their vehicle, their legs at grotesque angles and flies massing round open wounds in their faces.
Perhaps they’d been chatting to each other when the missiles hit. A group were all in their seats in the van they were travelling in.
Someone had covered their bodies with thin white sheeting but you could still make out the front passenger, his mouth open, head back as he’d been killed.
The vehicles were packed with suitcases and medical packs the group were taking only a few miles down the road to help relatives, the elderly and the ill inside Russian-controlled territory.
According to Vladimir Putin, all this area is now Russian after he signed a decree annexing not only Zaporizhzhia but also Kherson and the two Donbas regions, Luhansk and Donetsk.
But in this clearing which was once the site for a car parts market, the Ukrainians who were gathering the DNA of their countrymen and women were digging in once again for a fight to hold on to their territory, but also a legal war which they’re determined to win.
“These are definitely war crimes,” the Ukrainian interior minister Denys Monastyrskyi told us after visiting the site.
“And Putin should pay for what he’s done.”
The aid convoy was a routine convoy. Up to 150 people met here daily first thing in the morning having got permission from the Russian authorities to visit the areas under Russian control.
They were planning to take out elderly or ill relatives who wanted to flee as well as deliver some provisions for those who didn’t want to leave their homes. They had no reason to suspect they would be the target of any attacks.
One witness, who asked only to be called Valeriy, said he couldn’t understand the questions about who had carried out this atrocity.
Many Ukrainians have said the spike in attacks to Russian losses on the battlefield
“I’m in shock from the rhetoric of journalists from Germany, from France, who ask who did this,” he told us.
“I speak with Russian soldiers just there (he points in the direction of the Russian-controlled areas) and even the Russian soldiers don’t think who did this… they know the Russian army bombed this.”
We spot Olga Linik on her telephone.
She’s obviously anxious and tells us she’s trying to find her parents. Her mother and father are both doctors and were in the convoy.
A crater left after the attack
“I tried to persuade them to stay with me in Dnipro but they insisted they wanted to go and help people in the Russian areas,” she explains.
“My father rang me and I don’t know what’s happened but he said he tried to save my mother for an hour but I don’t know what happened.”
She breaks off to receive a call. It’s her father who comes out from amidst all the busted vehicles in the convoy and flings his arms around her, sobbing.
Her mother hasn’t made it.
The two walk off back into the bomb site where Olga and her father say their final goodbyes, arms around each other, their mother’s black body bag at their feet.
At the time of writing, according to the Ukrainian police 30 people in the convoy have died, including children, and 88 more have been injured, a number of them critically wounded, in a string of attacks on Zaporizhzhia throughout the day.
Many Ukrainians we spoke to attributed the spike in attacks to Russian losses on the battlefield.
But the attack on the civilian convoy also came hours before the Russian President publicly declared his country’s annexation of the four Ukrainian regions.
But the devastating civilian attacks only seem to have hardened the resolve of the Ukrainians and their leader with Volodymyr Zelenskyy slapping in his application for Ukraine to become a member of NATO.
It’s a threat which was said to have prompted his Russian counterpart to mount his “special operation” in the first place. The situation on the ground in Ukraine looks set to become a lot worse.
Also by cameraman Jake Britton, and producers Chris Cunningham and Artem Lysak in Zaporizhzhia.
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World
Two children from Gaza enter UK for specialist medical care for first time after months of struggle
It was a welcome party of sorts, and it was assembled near arrivals at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.
A few people clutched flowers, others brought presents, while everyone carried a sense of relief.
Two children from Gaza had been given permission to enter Britain for specialist medical care and the pair would arrive on the evening flight from Cairo.
It was a significant moment – the first time UK visas had been granted to children from this war-ravaged enclave – and the product of months of struggle by a small group of British volunteers.
Ghena Abed, five, needs urgent treatment to save the vision in her left eye
As those in attendance offered up a cheer, a five-year-old called Ghena Abed emerged shyly from behind the security gates. With fluid pressing on her optic nerve, she needs urgent treatment to save the vision in her left eye.
Also in this party was a 12-year-old girl called Rama Qudiah. She is weak and malnourished and suffers from incontinence. Medics think she requires an operation on her bowel.
Medics think Rama Qudiah, 12, needs a bowel operation
Her mother, Rana, told us their arrival in Britian “is just a like a dream”.
Her daughter has certainly been fortunate. A small number of children from Gaza have benefited from medical evacuations, with the majority receiving care in countries in the Middle East, Europe, as well as the United States.
Rama’s mother, Rana
In March, the Israelis signed a deal with Jordan which could allow 2,000 children to leave the enclave for treatment of war injuries and conditions like cancer. However, just 29 were allowed to go at first instance.
The process has not been easy
Until now, not a single child from Gaza has entered the UK for medical care since the start of the current conflict, and the process has not been an easy one for the volunteers at Project Pure Hope.
They told Sky News it has taken 17 months to arrange temporary visas for Ghena and Rama.
Dr Farzana Rahman from Project Pure Hope
“A lot of us are health care workers and I think it’s in our DNA that when we see people who are suffering, particularly children, we want to try and do something and that’s what motivated us,” says Dr Farzana Rahman from Project Pure Hope.
When asked why she thinks it has taken so much time to secure their visas, Dr Rahman said: “I don’t know.”
Group argues it has no time to lose to help other children
But it is clear the arrival of children from Gaza is an issue of sensitivity. The British volunteers told us on a number of occasions that all costs would be met by private sources. The children will return to Gaza when the treatment is completed.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Project Pure Hope is not finished, however – group members have drawn up a list of other children they can help, and argue they have no time to lose.
“One of the hardest parts of trying to make progress in this area is that delays cost lives. A number of children have died who we haven’t been able to help and this is an urgent situation and I think for all of us that’s the hardest part,” says Dr Rahman.
The biggest city in the Sahel has been ransacked and left in ruins.
War erupted in Sudan’s capital Khartoum in April 2023 and sent millions searching for safety.
The city was quickly captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after a power struggle with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for total control.
At least 61,000 people were killed from the fighting and siege conditions in Khartoum state alone.
Thousands more were maimed and many remain missing.
The RSF fled Khartoum’s neighbourhoods in caravans carrying the city’s looted treasures as the army closed in and recaptured it after two years of occupation.
The empty streets they left behind are lined with charred, bullet-ridden buildings and robbed store fronts.
The once shiny skyscrapers built along the confluence of the River Nile are now husks of blackened steel.
The neighbourhoods are skeletal. Generational homes are deserted and hollow.
Damage from fighting around Khartoum
Trenches snake the streets where copper electric cables were ripped out of the ground and pulled out of lampposts now overridden with weeds.
The majority of the 13 million people displaced by this war fled Khartoum. Many left in a rush, assuming it would only take a few weeks for peace to be restored.
My parents were among those millions and in the midst of the abandoned, looted homes is the house where I grew up.
Yousra Elbagir’s family home was left in ruins by RSF troops
Yousra said it was likely a bomb had previously fallen nearby and shaken the house at its base
A shell of a home
I have to strain my eyes to see the turn to my house. All the usual markers are gone. There are no gatherings of young people drinking coffee with tea ladies in the leafy shade – just gaping billboard frames that once held up advertisements behind cars of courting couples parked by the Nile.
Our garden is both overgrown and dried to death.
The mango, lemon and jasmine trees carefully planted by my mother and brother have withered.
Structural damage to the outside of the home
The Bougainvillea has reached over the pathway and blocked off the main entrance. We go through the small black side door.
Our family car is no longer in the garage, forcing us to walk around it.
It was stolen shortly after my parents evacuated.
The two chairs my mum and dad would sit at the centre of the front lawn are still there, but surrounded by thorny weeds and twisted, bleached vines.
How the home looked before Sudan’s war
And how it looks now
The neighbour’s once lush garden is barren too.
Their tall palm trees at the front of the house have been beheaded – rounding off into a greyish stump instead of lush fronds.
Read more:
How recaptured palace is a significant sign of return to order
Sudan’s paramilitary chief announces rival government
Everyone in Khartoum is coming back to a game of Russian roulette. Searching out their houses to confirm suspicions of whether it was blasted, burned or punctured with bullets.
Many homes were looted and bruised by nearby combat but some are still standing. Others have been completely destroyed.
How the home looked before the war
And how it looks now
The outside of our house looks smooth from the street but has a crack in the base of the front wall visible from up close.
It is likely a bomb fell nearby and shook the house at its base – a reminder of the airstrikes and shelling that my parents and their neighbours fled.
Inside, the damage is choking.
Most of the furniture has been taken except a few lone couches.
The carpets and curtains have been stripped. The electrical panels and wiring pulled out. The appliances, dishes, glasses and spices snatched from the kitchens.
Yousra shows her mother pictures found in the home
The walls are bare apart from the few items they decided to spare. Ceilings have been punctured and cushions torn open in their hunt for hidden gold.
The walls are marked with the names of RSF troops that came in and out of this house like it was their own.
The home that has been the centre of our life in Sudan is a shell.
Sudan’s war has left the country fractured
Glimmers of hope
The picture of sheer wreckage settles and signs of familiarity come into focus.
A family photo album that is 20 years old.
The rocking chair my mother cradled me and my sister in. My university certificate.
Yousra finds her university certificate in the wreckage
Celebratory snaps of my siblings’ weddings. Books my brother has had since the early nineties.
The painting above my bed that I have pined over during the two years – custom-made and gifted to me for my 24th birthday and signed by my family on the back.
There are signs of dirt and damage on all these items our looters discarded but it is enough.
Yousra’s parents pictured at home before they fled Khartoum
Evidence of material destruction but a reminder of what we can hope will endure.
The spirit of the people that gathered to laugh, cry and break bread in these rooms.
A portrait of Yousra’s grandmother damaged by RSF troops
The hospitality and warmth of a Sudanese home with an open door.
The community and sense of togetherness that can never truly be robbed.
What remains in our hearts and our city is a sign of what will get us through.
World
Unpredictable and disruptive or canny and persistent – what exactly is Donald Trump’s foreign policy?
So, after 100 days of Donald Trump the big question for me remains – does the US president have a coherent foreign policy or is he just winging it?
Let’s take his attitude to the war in Ukraine – here “inconsistent” is perhaps the best description.
Back in February, he and vice president JD Vance humiliated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by shouting at him in the Oval Office.
A few days later, I spoke to Mr Zelenskyy in person when he confided to me that maybe he would have to step down if NATO could guarantee Ukraine membership – a man who perhaps sensed he could never win against a hostile Mr Trump.
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Sky News meets Zelenskyy: The key moments
Yet, fast-forward to last weekend in Rome, and an iconic picture of the two men in close conversation at the Pope’s funeral.
This time round, it is Russian President Vladimir Putin on the receiving end of the presidential anger, blaming him for the fact that “too many people are dying!”
Trump and Zelenskyy talk in the Vatican. Pic: AP
To Trump’s supporters, this is the smart negotiator, constantly repositioning himself as new information comes in, prior to pulling off a spectacular deal.
To his many detractors, it indicates a dangerous incoherence that is replicated in other key areas, including tariffs as well as his relationship with his allies in Europe and his foes in Beijing.
Trump 100: Read more
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Trump’s awkward reckoning 100 days in
How an immigration crackdown has changed lives
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Flexible or fallible; in control or all at sea? In the fast and furious world of Donald Trump, it’s almost impossible to call.
The only constants are his unwavering self-belief, or as the man himself says: “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
We shall see.
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