CCTV footage from a Kyiv park captured the moment a rocket hit a bus and damaged nearby buildings on March 14, 2022.(YouTube video screen shot / news.au.com)
By Richard Moorhead March 14, 2022 at 5:47pm
A civilian bus was reportedly bombed in a Russian rocket attack in Kyiv on Monday.
CCTV footage released by Kyiv’s city government showed the bombing, according to a video posted to YouTube by an Australian news site.
In the video, a man walking along a park path stopped, apparently hearing something in the sky.
He glanced to the horizon moments before a projectile devastated a nearby bus, vaporizing the bus stop where it was parked.
Two people were killed in the rocket strike and nine injured, according to the New York Post, citing Germany’s Bild outlet.
The act may amount to a war crime, if it should turn out that civilians were intentionally targeted.
It’s unlikely — though certainly not impossible — that a green passenger bus was in use as a military vehicle, especially in the midst of a civilian neighborhood.
Does this look like a possible war crime to you?
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko shared a video of the scene of the bombing some time after the rocket strike. The video contains no indication that the vehicle was a legitimate military target.
Klitschko, a former world champion boxer, has urged western governments to support Ukraine’s struggle for independence and freedom from Russian occupiers.
“City bus just got hit by the rocket,” he said. “Lives are getting lost. That’s the war that Russia started.”
Putin’s dream of creating a Greater Russia is my country’s nightmare. #SaveUkraine#kyiv #StopPutinsWar #Standtogether #FreeUkraine #WeAreAllUkrainians #StandWithUkraine #StopTheWar pic.twitter.com/EKw3K6BsbZ
— Klitschko (@Klitschko) March 14, 2022
“Putin’s war against Ukraine,” he said in the video, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “That is what it looks like.”
Russian troops have also attacked civilian apartment buildings in Mariupol.
A man looks at a burned apartment building that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on Sunday. https://t.co/yBirFBXxA8
📷 Evgeniy Maloletka / AP pic.twitter.com/sEA3wyS6XS
— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 14, 2022
At the beginning of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian leaders pledged they’d only attack military targets.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in thousands of civilian casualties, with some observers speculating that Russia’s military strategy has become more indiscriminate as the invasion continues longer than Russian leaders expected.
Richard Moorhead is a conservative journalist, a graduate of Arizona State University, service member, and guitar player.