The Second Coming?

What the Destruction of Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital Says About the U.S. Presidential Election

Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. Photo by Oz Katerj.

When a Russian-launched Kh-101 missile landed on Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital shortly before noon on Monday, the world saw in stark relief - had there ever been any doubt - the totalitarian ethos of mass murder that is at the heart of the dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Building on Putin’s long history of civilian mass murder honed during a decade of supporting the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria (and even before that in Chechnya) and the atrocities of the Russian armed forces in Bucha and Izium, its bombing of the train station of Kramatorsk, the grotesque siege of Mariupol and the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children, the attack at Okhmatdyt killed at least 37 people, including at least 3 children. As someone who has become far more familiar with cancer and its treatments over the last year than I ever wanted to, I know that, even with the best, most thoughtful and measured treatment, the path through the maze of the various ways the illness manifests is daunting and stressful. The thought that the very young patients at Ukraine’s largest children’s medical center - which specializes in cancer and hematological diseases - who were going through that process literally had the building they were being treated in disintegrate around them is something so hateful and terribly unjust that it reinforces my belief in something I have said for many years: The world would be better without Vladimir Putin and his minions in it. 

[Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, himself a recently lapsed génocidaire, apparently didn't think so, giving Putin a warm embrace in Moscow on the day of the massacre.]

Nearly 5,000 miles away, one of Putin’s most vocal acolytes - the convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and failed putschist Donald Trump - who in February 2022 praised  Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” and “savvy” - appears poised to stand at least an even chance of recapturing the White House in November’s election, a shameful commentary on the electorate that might put him there.