Consider This from NPR - A Russian Missile, A Little Pink Coffin And Unimaginable Grief

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

In the span of one morning this week, Russian airstrikes hit cities across Ukraine—some hundreds of miles from the frontline. Throughout the war, even when Russian troops haven't been able to reach Ukrainian cities, their missiles and rockets and artillery have.More than 6,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its campaign in February, according to the United Nations. NPR's Jason Beaubien has the story of one of those deaths, 11-year-old Nasta Grycenko.This episode also includes reporting from NPR's Kat Lonsdorf.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. A bus stop, a playground, an office building. These were some of the targets hit by Russian missile and drone strikes in Ukraine in the span of one morning this week. More than a dozen cities were hit, many of them hundreds of miles from the front lines. The attacks seemed to communicate a message. No one is safe. 81-year-old Viktor Shevchenko was watering plants on his balcony in Dnipro Monday morning. It was a sunroom, completely enclosed by glass.

A few minutes after he went inside to cook breakfast, a strike hit just outside his apartment. The force from the blast nearly knocked him over. His kitchen cabinets blew open. The windows on his balcony shattered inward. A few minutes earlier, he kept repeating. A few minutes earlier, and he would have been out there, on the balcony, in that explosion of glass. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, posted a video on the messaging app Telegram shortly after the attacks. We are dealing with terrorists, he said. They are trying to wipe us off the face of the earth.

These strikes came just days after an attack on a key bridge that links Russia to Crimea, a part of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for that attack, but Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian special services. It is simply impossible to leave crimes of this kind unanswered, Putin said, in an address to his Security Council. He called Monday morning's wave of attacks a massive high-precision strike on infrastructure, military command and communications in Ukraine. Though, again, civilians and civilian infrastructure seem to have been the major targets.

Olha Shmoilo in Kyiv says she is exhausted by this war. From the one hand, we kind of get used to it, but from the other hand, I don't know. Of course, I'm angry, but I want this to be over as soon as possible. Consider this. As Russia runs up a string of defeats on the battlefield, its missiles and rockets are still claiming civilian lives. We'll hear about one of them, an 11-year-old girl named Nasta. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Tuesday, October 11th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Putin, as we mentioned, said this week's airstrikes are retaliation for an attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge on Saturday. It was the day after his 70th birthday. Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that bridge means a lot to Putin. That bridge was both a symbolic gesture to connect Mother Russia to Crimea, which was seized from and illegally annexed in 2014 from Ukraine.

But right now, the Russians are in need of good military infrastructure and supply and logistics routes. And that bridge was a key part of the plan. Russia says the bridge is still navigable. But Weiss says this is the sort of attack that U.S. officials have worried could trigger a cycle of escalation. For the Russians, what they have at their disposal right now is the ability to escalate the war, either by attacking civilian infrastructure, critical infrastructure like dams or power plants, and to make life absolutely miserable for civilians who are in Ukraine today. Throughout the war, when Russian troops have not been able to reach Ukrainian cities, their missiles and rockets and artillery have. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed.

NPR's Jason Bobian has the story of one of them. It was a Saturday afternoon. There was a buzz of excitement across much of the Kharkiv region. Ukrainian troops had just staged a major counteroffensive, and the relentless Russian shelling around the city of Kharkiv had finally eased. Eleven-year-old Nasta Gritsenko and her parents, Andrii and Irina, had decided to spend the weekend at what they called their country house in the nearby city of Chuhuiv. Nasta's parents went out to deliver some humanitarian food packets to elderly residents

when three large explosions rocked the city. A neighbor, Mikhailo Kantemirov, shows where he found Nastya after the missile struck. This is the fragment of the missile. He says she was still alive, still conscious, lying next to the crater where the house had once stood. And she asked why this happened to me. I didn't do anything bad to them. Her parents heard the explosions. They could see the smoke. Irina Grutsenko's first thought was, Nasta! And she raced towards their cottage.

Every day, local officials in Ukraine announce grim statistics about the war. This number of people were injured. That number of people died. According to the UN, roughly 6,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine over the last seven months of war. Nasta's father, Andrei Gritsenko, is adamant that his 11-year-old daughter shouldn't be a statistic. A statistic isn't something you pick up from the loading dock of the morgue, as Andri and Irina were forced to one cold, wet September morning. Nastya's body is carried down from the loading dock in a pink, satin-lined coffin and slid into the back of a white cargo van.

As my translator, Polina Litvinova, and I are getting into our own car, she tells me that I'm lucky I couldn't understand Irina crying in Russian. I could hear her saying, forgive me. As hard as the scene at the morgue was to watch, she says listening to a mother sobbing over her daughter's body was even harder. She said, like, I don't want to live without you, who will meet me when I come home from work, and so on and so on. And she cried and said, forgive me, forgive me, please.

Outside a Soviet-era apartment block, there's a viewing of Nastas' open casket. Neighbors place bouquets of flowers on her coffin. A girl, who appears to be about Nastas' age, 10 or 11 years old, cries inconsolably. Valentina Ovcharenko, who lives on a flat two floors below Nastas' family, is passing out small bags of sweets. She says people in the neighborhood have been crying for days over Nastas' death. But she says it's been the worst for Nastas' mother. Her mother, Ira, wanted to jump from the balcony and she this was she was rescued from these. Nasta's parents both work for a clothing manufacturing company. Their apartment isn't

fancy. Their cottage in Chihuahua with its apple trees and a vegetable garden was also a simple unassuming house before it was obliterated. It wasn't on a prime piece of land. It backed up against an oil storage depot. The same barrage of Russian missiles that killed Nasta blew up several large fuel tanks. Like most kids in Ukraine, Nasta had been attending online classes. Sitting on benches in the playground outside their apartment block, Nasta's parents tell me Nasta had always wanted a dog. This year, her 23-year-old brother found a white Labrador for her, which she was enchanted by. Nasta liked to sing and to watch patriotic videos on YouTube of Ukrainian soldiers.

Every time I came back home from work, she showed me videos and she said, Mom, look at them, they have so much fun. She really believed that they would protect her. Irina stares into the distance as she talks about her daughter. Kharkiv is just 30 miles from the Russian border. It's a predominantly Russian-speaking part of Ukraine, and it had close ties to Russia before the war. Irina and Andriy go back and forth between speaking Russian and Ukrainian as they talk about their daughter being killed by a Russian missile

launched from Russian territory. You know, I believe that not all people in Russia are so cruel and horrible like Russian soldiers, but I just want the war to stop. Nastas' funeral takes place under a cold, drizzling rain at a sprawling graveyard named Cemetery 18 in Kharkiv. Just a few hundred yards from her grave, a funeral is also taking place for a soldier in a quadrant of the cemetery adorned with yellow and blue Ukrainian flags.

After the nails are pounded into Nastya's coffin and she's buried in the ground, Andriya comes over to me and Polina. Tell the world what the Russians did to my daughter, he says. Irina can barely walk. Her sister eases her into a car as they leave. A few days after the funeral, Irina says she's still trying to come to grips with the fact that there's a person in Russia who pushed the button that launched the missile that killed her daughter.

I don't wish them death because I never wish anyone death, but I wish them to suffer like we suffer and to feel all our pain like we feel this pain. Losing a child, she says, is the worst pain in the world. In PR's Jason Bobian in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Losing a child, she says, is the worst pain in the world. NPR's Jason Bobian in Kharkiv, Ukraine. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation,

providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.