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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The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.
Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.
We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.
It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.
Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.
We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.
David Lammy and Norway’s Foreign Minister Barth Eide view the melting Blomstrandbreen glacier. Pic: PA
The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.
“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”
In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.
The foreign secretary visiting SvalSat, a satellite ground station which monitors climate in Svalbard. Pic: PA
Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.
“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.
But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.
Norwegian observers are concerned about the Russian leader – and Trump being ‘too soft’ on him. Pic: AP
Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”
Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.
More from Sky News:
Trump doubles down on Putin criticism
Why Russian troops are gathering near ‘fortress city’
In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.
There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.
“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
World
‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment
A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.
Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing
The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.
“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.
He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.
Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu reportedly accepts US ceasefire plan
Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.
Children are among the bulk of the casualties in Gaza
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.
“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.
“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”
Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.
They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.
Dr Victoria Rose is a British surgeon working in southern Gaza’s last remaining hospital
Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
Hatem Senior
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The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.
He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.
Read more:
Gaza doctor’s nine children killed
How the new Gaza aid rollout collapsed
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”
Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.
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