Yevhen Plachinta, 27, at the Poltava regional hospital on Sept. 7, 2024. Yevhen was injured during a Russian strike on a Potlava military institute on Sept. 3.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
First, the air-raid alarm sounded over the central Ukrainian city of Poltava on the morning of Sept. 3, then the phones of cadets at the Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology started buzzing with additional alerts warning them that they were in a particularly dangerous place.
Despite the warnings, one of the cadets who was present says he witnessed a senior officer addressing a group of 25 to 30 other cadets at their 9 a.m. assembly, a daily occurrence at the institute – and that the officer asked his charges to wait until he finished speaking before they went to the bomb shelter.
The allegation is being made as critics say that a culture of impunity among senior Ukrainian officers – over a series of mass-casualty incidents – is damaging the country’s ability to defend itself against the Russian invasion.
“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t like what’s happening – we should be going to the shelter,’” said the cadet, Private Yevhen Plachinta, a 27-year-old who said he witnessed the scene unfold around 9:05 a.m. According to local media reports, a pair of Iskander ballistic missiles slammed into the building at 9:08 a.m., killing at least 58 people in one of the deadliest attacks of Russia’s 2½-year-old war against Ukraine.
On Saturday, Pte. Plachinta was lying in a hospital bed in the intensive-care ward of Poltava’s main hospital with a bloodshot left eye and stitches lining the left side of his face from his temple to his chin. He said he blacked out at the moment of the attack and woke up later under a pile of rubble. More than 300 people were injured in the strike.
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Pte. Plachinta’s version of events echoes that of an unnamed victim – wounded during a short training visit to the institute – who told the Ukrainian news website texty.org.ua that they had been surprised to see that cadets at the institute “dressed in uniform, lined up regularly, went in formation even to the canteen, despite the fact that reconnaissance drones often flew over the city.”
Russian pro-war Telegram channels have also claimed that cadets at the institute were lined up at the time of the attack. The allegation has been denied by Ihor Mitsyuk, the head of the institute, who told Ukrainian media that “since the beginning of the war, even gatherings of more than 10 people have been prohibited on our territory.”
People lay flowers at a memorial at the scene a missile strike at a military institute in Poltava, Ukraine on September 7, 2024.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
No one from the leadership of the Poltava institute was available to meet The Globe and Mail on Saturday, and calls to the local spokesperson for the Ukrainian military went unanswered over the weekend. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with NBC News that the missiles flew for only three minutes between takeoff and arrival – too quickly for most at the institute to get to the nearest shelter.
Pte. Plachinta doesn’t know how long he was trapped under the partly destroyed building. He can’t hide his anger at what he sees as a series of missteps by his commanding officers that he believes played a role in the high casualty count in Tuesday’s attack.
In addition to the commander’s decision to keep his cadets standing during the air alarm, Pte. Plachinta said the institute was so ill-prepared for an attack that even some of those who made it to the shelter were injured when a water pipe inside burst open.
He said his commanders shouldn’t have been surprised that the institute – which would have been well-known to the Russian army since it has served as a military academy since Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Soviet Union – could be targeted. Seven of the 25 cadets in his class were killed.
“I had no doubt that this building could be attacked. This is too open an area and everyone knows what’s here,” said Pte. Plachinta, who is being trained to help secure Ukrainian military communications. Other students are studying to become radar operators or signal officers.
Russia says it struck the institute because it housed a drone and electronic-warfare centre. Mr. Zelensky has vowed that there will be a full investigation into the attack.
Illia Ponomarenko, a prominent Ukrainian war correspondent, said promises of an investigation would mean little unless senior officers were held responsible for their mistakes in Poltava.
Mr. Ponomarenko pointed to a string of previous incidents – including a strike last year on a medal ceremony in the southern Zaporizhzhia region that left 19 soldiers dead and another one early in the war that struck the Yavoriv training base in western Ukraine, killing 64 – where large numbers of Ukrainian troops died because their commanders gathered them in open locations without adequate air defence.
“No one was held responsible and way too many senior military officials demonstrate unbelievable negligence in terms of military personnel safety. Lack of responsibility among senior military officials is a systemic Ukrainian problem that is greatly impeding our national war effort,” Mr. Ponomarenko said.
Vlad Tziganenko, 28, in intensive care at the Poltava regional hospital on Sept. 7, 2024. Vlad was also injured during the strike on Sept. 3.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
There was anger also outside the partly destroyed institute, where a pile of flowers and candles has been growing every day since the blast.
“We are angry, devastated, all these emotions come at the same time,” said Tatiana Nastryuk, whose husband, Pavlo, was an instructor at the institute and is now in hospital with head trauma and shrapnel wounds suffered in the explosion.
“We’re mad at the commanders of this institute because Russia knows the location of this place,” she said. “My husband wants to stay alive and not die.”
The couple’s 17-year-old son, Dmytro, interjected as they stood on the sidewalk outside the metal gates of the institute on Saturday. “They shouldn’t have been in this building. Maybe somewhere in the west of Ukraine. Or maybe not so many people in one place.”
Dmytro will be conscription age next year. Before last week’s attack, he said, he was looking forward to his military service. Now, he said, he no longer wants to serve in an army that’s so careless with the lives of its people.
“How can you be patriotic when you see how the commanders of the army treat their people? A lot of people my age feel the same way I do. A lot have already left the country.”
Not all of the victims of the attack, however, were willing to blame their commanders. Lying in his own bed in the intensive-care ward, one room over from Pte. Plachinta’s, 28-year-old cadet Vlad Tziganenko said he was angry only at those who launched the Iskander missiles that left him with head-to-toe shrapnel wounds.
“I blame Russia. No one else.”