Kramatorsk, 27 June 2023. Eighteen minutes after the all-clear, a summer evening is cut through by an explosion in the very center of the city.
A Russian Iskander missile hits a pizzeria packed with visitors. Rescuers, municipal workers, the military, and civilians rush to free survivors from under the rubble. Russia’s disinformation campaign to оправдати the Russian army for yet another terrorist attack against civilians began a day after the missile strike.
Among the fakes and narratives, according to research by the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, the most widespread were: “The pizzeria is a military facility” and “Western mercenaries were the main target of the strike.” As “evidence,” hostile media used footage in which English can be heard, and photos showing foreign instructors working in the city. They emphasized the presence of military personnel in the city and suppressed information about civilian deaths and injuries, including those of three Colombian citizens. They claimed the restaurant was inaccessible to ordinary residents.
The online outlet Gazeta.ru, in a piece titled “A military expert рассказал about the impact on the situation of a missile strike on an AFU headquarters in Kramatorsk,” suggested that the attack was successful.
In their propaganda materials, Russians often use photographs by Ukrainian documentary photographers. In particular, the aforementioned Gazeta.ru illustrated its piece with a photo by Oleksandr Ratushniak for Reuters. The image shows “the restaurant building, heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in central Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, 27 June 2023.”
The Reuters article featuring Oleksandr’s photo, titled “Russian missile hits restaurant in Ukraine’s Kramatorsk, at least eight killed,” reports that “the brunt of the casualties was at the restaurant, and at least three children were among the dead.”
“The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, including the shelling of the city’s railway station in April 2022, when 63 people were killed. Earlier this year, there were at least two strikes on residential buildings and other civilian sites.
Russia denies deliberately shelling civilian targets in the course of what it calls a ‘special military operation’ after invading its neighbor in February 2022,” — Reuters quote.
The next day, another photographer, Sasha Maslov, visited the scene, where the rubble was still being cleared. He saw friends and relatives of the pizzeria’s staff by the bombed-out café, waiting for news about their loved ones.
“I remember the elderly people — a woman and a man who covered his face with his hands. They sat on a bench and hoped their granddaughter was alive.”, — Sasha Maslov recalls. Later, the eighteen-year-old granddaughter of Tetiana and Yurii would be found dead under the rubble.
As a result of the strike on “Ria,” which during the full-scale war had been one of the most popular venues in Kramatorsk, 13 people were killed on 27 June 2023, including 4 children. Only two of those killed were military personnel; all the others were civilians — café staff and visitors.
That evening, Ukrainian writer and civic activist Viktoriia Amelina was mortally wounded at the Ria restaurant in central Kramatorsk. A delegation from Colombia, who were in Kramatorsk вместе with Viktoriia, were also injured. At the start of the full-scale invasion, Viktoriia Amelina joined the team of field researchers documenting Russia’s war crimes, Truth Hounds.
Kramatorsk is a city in eastern Ukraine, with the front line drawing closer. Despite this, the city still has cozy places — meeting and отдыха spots for local youth, volunteers, journalists, and soldiers returning from the front.
This piece was produced with the support of The Fritt Ord Foundation.
Worked on this piece:
Topic researcher, text author: Yana Yevmenova
Photo editor: Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Literary editor: Yuliia Futei
