Why the terrorist attack in Mariupol maternity hospital is the point of no return

An English Google search for "mariupol maternity hospital" returns over 55 million results. All these links, most of which lead to the world's leading information resources – the BBC, NYTimes, the Guardian – are in a hurry to inform the whole world about an unprecedented, even by military standards, terrorist attack committed by the army of the Russian Federation.

On March 9, Russian troops fired missiles at a maternity hospital and a children's hospital in Mariupol. The building collapsed, some of the patients – and among them children – were buried in the rubble. 17 people were injured. Pavel Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said the attack took place during a ceasefire agreed with the Russian side.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the incident the final proof that a genocide of Ukrainians is taking place and a war crime.

The White House described the attack on the maternity hospital as "barbaric".

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote that there are few things in this world more heinous than attacking the defenseless.

The public international reaction was so unequivocal and large-scale that even the Kremlin announced that it would ask its military for an explanation about what had happened. The fact that the Russian Federation understands the principled nature of the events in Mariupol for the further course of the military campaign is also evidenced by the confusion that began among the statements of pro-government speakers.

So, a few hours before the attack, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that Ukrainian militants had taken out patients and taken up combat positions in the maternity ward of Mariupol. Later, she said that the news about the bombing of the hospital by Russian troops was "information terrorism." At the same time, according to the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergei Lavrov, the Azov battalion sat in the hospital, and it was they who were attacked by the Russian army.

If we discard emotions, which are very numerous, then the facts look like this: in the 21st century, one country bombs a children's hospital and a maternity hospital on the territory of another country. For anyone, even the most apolitical state, this is too much and the world is no longer indifferent to what is happening in Ukraine.

For Ukraine itself, which has been holding its own against an unprecedented aggression in the 21st century for two weeks now, this is a point of no return, and a closed opportunity for any negotiations that war-weary people in the occupied areas might secretly desire.

After the attack on the maternity hospital and the shots of bloody pregnant women, it is obvious that no one will accept a compromise, and the intensity of hostilities on the Ukrainian side will reach a new level.

This was also confirmed by Aleksey Arestovich, adviser to the head of the President’s Office, commenting on the airstrike: “Before the strike on the maternity hospital in Mariupol, these were flowers. Now, creatures, a completely different war will begin, ”he said.

In practice, this means that the gap for compromise in the negotiations has narrowed to a minimum. Any concession will be interpreted as playing along with the aggressor who dropped missiles on pregnant women. The degree of hatred in Ukrainian society, slightly lowered by fatigue during two weeks of hostilities, returned to the starting level again and even exceeded it.

As for the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the fighters of the defense, their motivation, already super high, received another reason for the fight and absolute ruthlessness towards the enemy. It is only a matter of a very short time that this motivation will spread beyond the borders of Ukraine and focus on the search for those involved in instigating the war and its participants around the world.