Kiev struck in the night: at least thirteen dead, a children's hospital hit

On the night of 19 to 20 August 2026, Russia launched a combined attack of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones on Kiev and several regions of Ukraine. At least thirteen people were killed, twelve in the capital and one in the surrounding region, and around forty were wounded. A children's hospital, a school and residential buildings were hit; in the Solomianskyi district, the upper floors of a nine-storey building were destroyed. No casualties were reported among the children and staff present inside the paediatric hospital that was struck.

The tolls diverge: one account reports twelve dead and thirty-three wounded in the capital alone, another at least thirteen dead and some forty wounded. The targets, too, are contested: the Ukrainian authorities speak of civilian infrastructure, while the Russian Defence Ministry maintains that it struck only military-industrial sites, logistics centres and fuel depots. “It was a massive attack — the Russians had long been preparing it and combined different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure,” said Volodymyr Zelensky.

The fifth commandment forbids the killing of the innocent. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that God, the author of life, forbids the unjust taking of our neighbour's life, and that the blood of the innocent cries out to Heaven. No reason of State, no calculus of war makes licit the deliberate killing of those who bear no arms: the child on his hospital bed, the schoolboy, the sleeping resident. The distinction between the combatant and the innocent is not a diplomatic convention to be bent to the needs of the hour; it is of divine law, and whoever tramples it answers before God for the blood that is shed.

Faced with this, the Church in Ukraine calls first not to arms but to prayer. In his weekly video message, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, renewed the appeal of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches for a worldwide day of prayer for peace on 24 August, the thirty-fifth anniversary of Ukraine's independence. “We believe that prayer is more powerful than weapons,” he said. This is the right order: where men multiply their engines of death, the Christian sets against them supplication, knowing that true peace comes down from above and is not the fruit of force alone.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), exposition of the fifth commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Genesis iv, 10, the voice of Abel's blood crying from the earth to God (Vulgate). Gospel according to St Matthew v, 9, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”