Kryvyi Rih attack shows Russia’s intentional use of terror against Ukrainian civilians

Military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko discussed the issue on his Telegram channel.

According to him, Russian ballistic missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih demonstrates a clear intent to terrorize civilians rather than strike military targets.

On Friday, April 4, a Russian Iskander ballistic missile equipped with a cluster warhead hit a residential area of Kryvyi Rih, resulting in 19 fatalities, including 9 children, and injuring more than 50 people. The missile struck a neighborhood with a playground, far from any confirmed military infrastructure.

The use of a cluster munition—a weapon designed to cover a wide area—is inconsistent with any claim of a precision strike on a military facility. The expert noted that if Russia had truly been targeting a specific site, such as the restaurant it later claimed housed Ukrainian troops, it would have used a high-explosive unitary warhead for accuracy.

“This wasn’t a strike against a military objective—it was a deliberate attack meant to kill as many civilians as possible,” said Kovalenko.

In a disturbing twist, Russian state media later blamed the high civilian toll on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, alleging Ukraine failed to build enough bomb shelters—an effort to shift responsibility away from Moscow’s actions.

Kovalenko concluded that the strike reflects a broader pattern of Russian military tactics: the deliberate targeting of civilians under the guise of fighting armed forces, paired with a propaganda campaign to obscure accountability.