In Kryviy Rih, Ukraine, during a pleasant spring evening, two teenagers strolled together holding hands along a street close to an active playground. Danylo Nikitskiy and Alina Kutsenko, both aged 15, had only recently started dating about two months prior yet seemed deeply attached to each other.
A loud air-raid siren broke through the tranquility, yet there wasn’t enough time to find shelter before the Iskander-M ballistic missile approached the city at six times the speed of sound. According to Russia, they were aiming for a gathering of military leaders and Western advisors inside a nearby eatery.
Approximately two minutes following the launch of the missile, its high-explosive warhead exploded less than 50 yards away from the playground, scattering searing metal shards into the atmosphere.
Danylo and Alina fell,
together with eight other kids
Among the other casualties was a 9-year-old who enjoyed building with Legos and a 7-year-old who was returning home with their parents.
It was the deadliest single strike on children since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The attack, which killed a total of 20 people, shocked Ukraine and exposed the limits of President Trump’s
attempts to conclude the conflict
.
Since Trump assumed office with a promise to foster peace, Russia has escalated its attacks throughout Ukraine. On Palm Sunday, two ballistic missiles were launched.
killed 35 people
In the northern city of Sumy, it was hit by the most devastating attack this year.
“Yes, the war must end. But to end it…we must pressure Russia—the one choosing to kill children instead of choosing a cease-fire,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in response to the attack on his hometown of Kryviy Rih.
This description of the explosion and subsequent events relies on conversations with officials from Ukraine’s primary security and intelligence agency, the SBU, along with statements from eyewitnesses and an examination of video recordings from CCTV systems at the eatery and law enforcement body cams. The Wall Street Journal found no indications of any military activity in the vicinity.
Russia said it killed 85 servicemen and foreign officers in a “high-precision strike” on the restaurant, also destroying 20 military vehicles.
After school on April 4, the day of the strike, Danylo took the family’s pet Yorkshire terrier to the groomer and rushed over to Alina’s house. They hadn’t seen each other for days because he had received a bad grade the previous week and had stayed home to focus on his schoolwork.
“He mentioned how much he missed her,” stated his mother, Natalya Nikitska, who allowed him to visit Alina.
Danylo assisted Alina’s mother, Marta Kutsenko, in carrying her grocery bags up four flights of stairs to their apartment and waited for Alina to finish getting ready. “She was trying on many outfits in her bedroom,” remarked Kutsenko.
The conflict loomed over Danylo and Alina during their formative adolescent years, yet they managed to adjust. Similar to teens across the globe, they experienced their initial romantic encounters and frequented McDonald’s. However, due to the risk of Russian assaults, much of their education was conducted remotely via the internet.
It was around 5 p.m. when Alina headed out with Danylo and two friends, walking through residential neighborhoods of Kryviy Rih, an industrial town built on an iron-ore seam. Danylo called his mother to ask for permission to stay out later than usual so he could spend more time with his girlfriend.
They passed by Soviet-era apartment buildings heading towards the RoseMarine restaurant, where employees were concluding their hectic day’s work. Earlier in the evening, the venue had accommodated both a birthday celebration and a beauty industry conference arranged by a Kryvyi Rih business group. Approximately eighty individuals, largely female, participated in these gatherings.
Once the final guest departed at approximately 6:30 p.m., the kitchen crew took a smoke break outside the back of the eatery. One of the cooks decided to try out his new GoPro camera and started recording. Suddenly, an alarm appeared on another worker’s smartphone, with someone stating, “A missile is headed our way.”
The next instant
,
An explosion sent the cook crashing to the floor as the restaurant’s head chef landed atop him. The missile detonated within just under 100 yards of the eatery, sending shrapnel flying which sliced through metals, trees, and skin alike.
Russia often struck again after an initial attack, but the cook’s urge to help was stronger than his instinct to seek shelter. The camera kept filming as the cook sprinted, breathing heavily, toward a woman standing over a small boy in a yellow jacket lying face down on the ground beside a tricycle.
“Please dial for an ambulance!” she pleaded. The cook attempted to reach emergency services, but the network was unavailable.
Footage from police body cameras recorded moments of profound distress at the explosion site. Survivors extracted injured individuals from vehicles, among them the motionless body of a 7-year-old child who was traveling alongside their parents when the incident occurred.
On the playground, a body lay next to a merry-go-round. Another child’s body was supine on a bench beside two distraught adults consoling each other. A paramedic tried in vain to resuscitate a 3-year-old.
“They’re all 200s,” said the policeman wearing the body camera, using a military code word for dead.
Danylo’s parents witnessed the blast and spotted smoke billowing outside their window. The plume seemed to originate near Alina’s residence. Initially, they assumed Danylo’s unavailability was due to a disrupted telephone service. However, after several more minutes without success in contacting him, they hurriedly got into their car and merged with the throng of emergency services speeding towards the location.
As Danylo’s parents desperately looked for their child, the air-raid siren blared once more. Russian drones were striking yet another residential area within the city.
Near the playground, multiple bodies were partially concealed. Roman Nikitskiy, who was Danylo’s father, removed a towel covering one of the figures, exposing Danylo’s jeans and Nike sneakers. Danylo’s hand remained intertwined with Alina’s.
“The explosion wasn’t strong enough to separate them,” stated Nikitska, who is Danylo’s mother.
Marta Kutsenko’s personal frantic quest to find her daughter led her to this place as well, bringing together the parents in shared grief over losing their sole offspring. Footage captured the trio hunched over the motionless forms. “My sunshine, my beloved,” Nikitska uttered tearfully. Their two companions who had been walking alongside them were also deceased.
The children were laid to rest over three days of mourning, with Danylo and Alina in identical white caskets.
A few days following the assault, envoys from 32 nations, including the United States, convened at the playground where snow was gently falling.
A warning siren blared through the area as Roman Nikitskiy confronted the gathering of diplomats, directing his plea towards President Trump. “As the leader of the nation with unparalleled power,” he stated emphatically, “our children implore you to provide us with a Patriot missile defense system. This would enable us all to halt the adversary: Russia.” Here, ‘Patriot’ refers to a specific American anti-missile technology.
Nikitskiy additionally urged other Western nations to assist Ukraine in constructing a bomb shelter near each playground throughout the nation.
Russia’s delegate at the United Nations stated during a Security Council meeting that a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile interceptor led to civilian deaths. However, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency asserted that remnants of the projectile retrieved from the location and examined by the Journal indicated Russia was not telling the truth.
More than a week on, dazed residents were still picking pieces of shrapnel and glass out of the grass. Natalya Kalynychenko was filming a video to prove to relatives in Russia that the strike hadn’t successfully targeted the restaurant, as Moscow claimed.
“It’s futile to attempt explaining anything to them,” stated Kalynnychenko, who has an view of the playground from her apartment. Nonetheless, she gave it a shot.
Children came to look with curiosity at the swings, seesaw and sandpit covered with flowers, candy and stuffed animals.
“Where was the explosion?” said one boy.
“Let’s go look at that hole in the ground,” said another, pointing at a crater gouged by a fragment of the missile.
An 8-year-old named Kyrylo stood silently as he gazed at the memorials. He then took out a small toy car from his insulated coat pocket. “I’m not a child anymore; I have no use for toys like these,” he remarked, placing it alongside a pile of plush toys. “Is it true that we might never get to play here again?”
Alina and Danylo were laid to rest next to each other, close to little Tymofiy, who at three years old was the youngest casualty of the attack. Beside Alina in her casket lay a plush beaver that Danylo had gifted her. Using the final 1,100 hryvnia ($27) from Danylo’s savings jar, his parents purchased a flower arrangement for her gravesite. His mother mentioned that these were the sole blooms still fresh when they revisited the graveyard a week afterward.
On the ribbon, they inscribed: “To my Alina, forever yours—Danylo.”
Send your correspondence to Isabel Coles.
isabel.coles@wsj.com
