In a Flash of Fire and Shrapnel, a Smiling 4-Year-Old’s Life Is Snuffed Out
Whether through callousness in targeting or simply by malevolent design, terror has rained down from the skies on shopping malls, apartment buildings, schools and medical facilities, killing dozens of civilians.

Some military analysts have said that Russia, running low on precision weaponry, is firing haphazardly at targets in densely populated areas, heedless of collateral death and destruction. Others, like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other Ukrainian officials, say the strikes are part of a “terrorist” campaign to break the country’s will to resist. The missile strike on Vinnytsia killed 23 people, including Liza and two other children, and wounded 140 others.

“Russia continues its policy of intimidation and terrorism,” Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, wrote in an online post after speaking with Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, about the strike in Vinnytsia, and missile and artillery bombardments of Mykolaiv in the south, and Chasiv Yar in the east. “That is why it should be recognized as a terrorist state at the international level.”

In a statement on Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had aimed its strike in Vinnytsia at the military officer’s club, where members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were meeting with “representatives of foreign armament suppliers.” The ministry’s account, which could not be verified, concluded by noting that the attack resulted in the “elimination of the conference participants.”