Russia’s Vladimir Putin wrongly called Saturday’s partial destruction of a flagship bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea a “terrorist act”. His revenge was to unleash mass terror on cities across Ukraine on Monday, missiles raining destruction from the sky in the midst of the morning rush hour. The bombardment was the most wide-ranging since the early weeks of the war. Since international law states parties to conflict “must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants” and not direct attacks against civilians, it is hard to see this as anything other than the latest in the Kremlin’s grim catalogue of war crimes in Ukraine, one directly ordered by its president.
The explosion on the Kerch bridge — which Ukraine has celebrated but not claimed responsibility for — was without doubt a humiliation for Putin. It was a symbol of his seizure of Crimea, built on his orders, and breached on the day after his 70th birthday. That does not alter the fact it was a legitimate military target. It had been heavily used to supply Crimea and Russian forces in southern Ukraine. Civilians, moreover, were not deliberately targeted.
Putin insisted Russia had attacked Ukrainian “energy, military command and communications facilities”. Some infrastructure sites were indeed hit, leaving several regions without power and water — causing inevitable public suffering. But Moscow’s supposedly “precision” strikes also hit a city park popular with families with young children, a pedestrian bridge, museum and university buildings, and the German consulate in Kyiv — none of them military targets.