# OPEN LETTER: To the child of Novobavarskyi killed by seven Russian bombs > Introduction: a letter I never wanted to write - Author: Maxime Marquette - Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co) - Section: Open letter - Published: 2026-07-03 - Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-lettre-ouverte-a-lenfant-de-novobavarskyi-tue-par-sept-bombes-russes ## Introduction: a letter I never wanted to write ### A fifteen-year-old boy, an ordinary afternoon I am writing you this letter because I don't even know your first name, and that absence has haunted me since I read the first dispatches. You were **fifteen years old**. You lived in the **Novobavarskyi** district, in **Kharkiv**, Ukraine's second-largest city. On **July 1, 2026**, in the middle of the afternoon, seven Russian glide bombs fell on your city, and one of them ended your life. I never met you. I wasn't there. I received no call, no message from a relative who knew you. What I know, I have from the **official reports** of mayor **Ihor Terekhov** and governor **Oleh Syniehubov**, relayed by media I consider reliable. It is little, and it is enormous at the same time. ### Why I am writing to you, specifically I could have written a conventional **column**, with numbers coldly lined up: seven bombs, one dead, thirty-two wounded. But **numbers** end up anesthetizing those who read them. So I chose to write to you directly, because you deserve more than a statistic in a daily war tally. This **open letter** is not a stylistic exercise. It is my way of refusing to let your death become just another number in the long list of **civilian victims** of this war launched by **Vladimir Putin**. You matter. Your name, which I don't know, matters. ## The day everything changed for your city ### Seven bombs, three districts, an afternoon of terror According to information reported by **Gwara Media**, Russian forces dropped **seven guided glide bombs**, also called **KABs**, on the districts of **Kyivskyi**, **Osnovianskyi**, and **Novobavarskyi**. The **residents** of these neighborhoods had no way to protect themselves against this type of weapon, launched from Russian aircraft stationed far from the front line. Governor **Oleh Syniehubov** specified that the attack hit private residential areas, with no connection to any military infrastructure. These bombs, once dropped, glide over long distances thanks to a guidance system, which makes them particularly difficult for **Ukrainian air defense** to intercept. ### A toll that grows heavier hour after hour Mayor **Ihor Terekhov** first reported a partial toll, before revising it upward throughout the day. In the end, **32 people** were injured, a figure confirmed by several media outlets including **Ukrainska Pravda**. Three children are among the wounded, including a one-year-old girl and a sixteen-year-old boy suffering from shrapnel wounds. This **rising toll** over the hours illustrates a cruel reality of **urban warfare**: the first numbers announced are never final. Every **update** is a fresh open wound for a city that has lived under bombs for more than four years. ## You, and the other faces of this attack ### From one year old to seventy-six: total indiscrimination What strikes me in the testimonies gathered by local authorities is the range of ages affected. The youngest wounded was barely a year old; the oldest, according to **Terekhov**, was **76 years old**. Between these two extremes, you, fifteen years old, torn from life in a fraction of a second. A **seventeen-year-old** girl developed an acute stress reaction. A **sixteen-year-old** boy suffered blast injuries. These **details**, chilling in their administrative precision, tell a simple truth: Russian bombs do not choose their victims based on age, gender, or military status. ### What I refuse to say, and what I know I will never claim to have spoken to your **family**. I will never claim to know your dreams, your friends, your daily life before that fatal afternoon. That would be fabricating a **testimony** I have no right to fabricate, and it would betray the very thing I am trying to defend: the truth, without artifice. What I do know, however, is that your death is not an isolated accident. It is part of a **deliberate policy** of Russian strikes on **residential areas** of **Kharkiv**, a city that has suffered near-weekly air attacks since the start of the full-scale invasion in **2022**. ## The weapons that sealed your fate ### The KAB, a Soviet-era bomb turned low-cost precision weapon The **KAB**-type glide bombs are not new weapons. They are **unguided bombs** from the Soviet era, converted through the addition of fins and a satellite guidance module. This relatively inexpensive modification allows **Russia** to strike targets dozens of kilometers away without exposing its aircraft to Ukrainian air defense. This **economy of means** is precisely what makes this weapon so devastating for civilians: it allows **Moscow** to maintain a sustained pace of strikes on **Kharkiv**, a border city located less than **30 kilometers** from the Russian border, without suffering significant material losses. ### A target city since the start of the invasion Kharkiv occupies a **geographic position** that condemns it to **repeated martyrdom**. Its proximity to Russian territory allows **Vladimir Putin's** combat aircraft to drop their glide bombs from Russian airspace, out of the immediate reach of most short-range Ukrainian air defense systems. The city's residents have lived with this **reality** for years: no siren that gives enough warning time, no shelter that truly protects against a **bomb weighing several hundred kilograms**. Only reinforced air defense, with long-range systems, could change this equation. ## What your mayor said about you and yours ### Ihor Terekhov's words, between numbers and contained anger Mayor **Ihor Terekhov** communicated the **successive tolls** of this attack via the **Telegram** messaging app, a channel that has become the main real-time source of information for Kharkiv's residents since the war began. His tone, measured but firm, contrasts with the gravity of what he reports every day. Terekhov specified that the impacts occurred in **five distinct locations** across the city, a detail that underscores the **geographic scale** of this single afternoon of attacks. Each impact represents a street, a house, a life upended. ### Governor Syniehubov and the count of invisible wounds Regional governor **Oleh Syniehubov** added a dimension often overlooked in war tallies: **acute stress reactions**, those psychological wounds that don't show up on an X-ray but leave just as deep a mark. A one-year-old girl and a seventeen-year-old girl are among those who developed this type of reaction. This detail, seemingly secondary, reveals an **essential truth**: war does not only wound bodies. It also fractures the youngest people's ability to feel safe in their own home, their own neighborhood, their own city. ## To you, and to all the other children of this war ### You are not the first, and that is what terrifies me I must be **honest** with you: you are not the first teenager killed by a Russian strike on Kharkiv, and I fear you will not be the last. This city has already mourned other children, in other neighborhoods, on other afternoons similar to that of **July 1, 2026**. This **macabre repetition** must never become journalistic routine. Every name matters, every story deserves to be told separately, even if I don't know yours in detail. This is my modest way of resisting the trivialization of your death. ### What I want the world to remember about you I want those who read this **letter** to remember that you were fifteen years old, that you lived in a residential neighborhood, and that nothing in your daily life justified a Russian bomb ending your days. This is not a rhetorical shortcut: it is a fact established by local authority reports and corroborated by several independent media outlets. I also want this text to serve something larger than your story alone: to remind those who might forget that this war continues to kill ordinary teenagers, in ordinary cities, on afternoons that should have stayed ordinary. ## Responsibility that reaches all the way to Moscow ### A chain of decisions that does not stop at the pilot It would be easy, and false, to reduce this **tragedy** to the decision of a single Russian pilot that day. The chain of responsibility runs much higher: it includes the commanders who plan these strikes on residential areas, and it reaches all the way to the **top of the Russian state**, to **Vladimir Putin** himself. This **war** is not an accident of history. It is the result of a deliberate political choice, maintained since **February 2022**, to pursue a full-scale invasion that continues to cut down civilian lives, including yours, more than four years later. ### The impunity that fuels repetition As long as the **perpetrators** of these strikes do not answer before a credible international body, nothing guarantees that other teenagers in Kharkiv, or elsewhere in Ukraine, will not suffer the same fate. The **current impunity** is itself a silent encouragement to continue these attacks. I do not claim to hold the **perfect legal solution** to this problem. But I know that the systematic documentation of every strike, every victim, every tally, is an indispensable first step toward eventual accountability. ## Kharkiv, symbol city of an exhausted resilience ### A population that nonetheless refuses to leave Despite years of **repeated bombardment**, hundreds of thousands of residents continue to live in **Kharkiv**. This **persistence** is not recklessness: it is a visceral attachment to a city, a neighborhood, a life they refuse to abandon in the face of Russian aggression. This **resilience** deserves to be praised, but it must never serve as an excuse to minimize the gravity of what they endure. Living under the **constant threat** of glide bombs is not proof that the situation is "manageable"; it is proof of courage in the face of the unbearable. ### The human cost of a front line that barely moves anymore Kharkiv has not, for several years, been directly threatened with imminent **ground occupation**. But this relative **military stability** has never put an end to **air strikes**. Residents pay a **constant human price** for a war whose front line, meanwhile, moves slowly elsewhere in the country. This **disconnect** between front-line stability and the persistence of air strikes illustrates a cruel dimension of this war: one can live far from ground fighting and still die, as you did, under a bomb dropped from an aircraft. ## What the West owes you, and yours ### Still insufficient air defense systems **Ukraine** continues to demand more **Western air defense systems**, notably **Patriot** batteries capable of intercepting certain **Russian aerial threats**. These systems, expensive and scarce, remain insufficient to cover the entire Ukrainian territory, including a city as exposed as Kharkiv. Every **delay** in the delivery of this equipment translates, concretely, into less protected cities and more exposed populations. This is not a **geopolitical abstraction**: it is a direct equation between the timeline of Western deliveries and the number of civilian casualties. ### The duty not to look away I deeply believe that the **West**, of which I am part, has a **moral responsibility** toward cities like Kharkiv. This responsibility is not limited to **weapons deliveries**: it also includes the duty not to let this war disappear from media and political priorities, even after four years of conflict. Your **death**, like that of others before you, must remain visible. That is the very least I can offer you with the words at my disposal: refusing to let your story dissolve into indifference or media fatigue. ## The words I dare not say to you directly ### The powerlessness of writing in the face of the irreversible I must confess an **uncomfortable truth** to you: nothing I write here will change what happened to you on **July 1, 2026**. No sentence, however carefully crafted, can reverse the irreversible. This **powerlessness of writing** in the face of death is something I carry every time I document a tragedy of this war. And yet I keep writing, because the **alternative** — silence, forgetting, indifference — seems infinitely worse to me than the acknowledged powerlessness of words. ### What I promise you, despite everything I promise to keep documenting what is happening in **Kharkiv**, in **Odesa**, in **Kherson**, in every Ukrainian city that suffers Russian strikes. I promise never to turn your death into a mere **statistic** in my future writing, even when fatigue or routine might push me to. It is not much against what you **lost**. But it is what I can offer you, with the honesty that must accompany every line of this letter. ## What this letter cannot do ### It replaces neither justice nor family memory This open letter in no way replaces your family's **grieving process**, nor the longer process of any eventual **judicial proceeding** against those responsible for this strike. It has no such pretension. It is a modest gesture, that of a columnist who refuses to let your death pass in silence. I also acknowledge my **limitations**: I do not have access to investigative files, I do not know the precise technical details of the type of bomb that killed you, and I do not claim to invent them to make this text more "complete." ### Nor should it become a sterile exercise What I refuse, however, is for this letter to remain a mere **literary exercise** without consequence. I hope it adds to the pile of **testimonies**, **reports**, and **tallies** that, put together, might eventually weigh on the Western collective conscience. It is little, I know. But in a war where every day brings its share of **macabre tallies**, refusing indifference remains, on my scale, the only gesture available to me. ## The broader context of a bloody day ### Kharkiv was not alone that day **July 1, 2026** was not a dark day only for **Kharkiv**. According to several consistent reports, **Russian strikes** also hit the **Odesa** and **Kherson** regions the same day, bringing the **national toll** to several dead and around fifty wounded across the country. This **simultaneity of strikes** across several **Ukrainian regions** is no coincidence. It corresponds to a **Russian saturation strategy**, aimed at spreading thin Ukrainian air defense capabilities and maximizing psychological pressure on the entire country. ### A war with no summer pause Contrary to some common assumptions, the war in **Ukraine** knows no **seasonal truce**. Summer 2026, like the summers before it, brings its share of air strikes, macabre tallies, and battered cities. Your death is part of this **tragic continuity**, with no apparent beginning or end. This **absence of respite** is perhaps the most exhausting aspect of this war for Ukrainian civilians: there is no season in which they can lower their guard, no period when the danger truly fades. ## What your story teaches those who follow this war from afar ### Distance must never become indifference For many in the **West**, this war has become **background noise**, a line in the evening news, drowned among other international crises. Your story, if it manages to reach even a handful of readers beyond the usual numbers, will have accomplished something important. I refuse the idea that **geographic distance** justifies **emotional distance**. Kharkiv may be just a name on a map for many, but it is a very real city, with very real teenagers, of whom you were one just days ago. ### The role of columnists like me in this war I am not on the **ground**. I do not wear a bulletproof vest, I do not stand near the rubble. My more modest role consists of assembling the **facts** reported by **reliable sources**, giving them a form that moves people, without ever inventing what I do not know. It is this discipline, this limit I impose on myself, that distinguishes my work from pure emotional fabrication. I prefer an honest letter about what I know, rather than an invented account of what I imagine your life to have been. ## What I promise never to do with your story ### Never turn your death into a hollow rhetorical tool I **commit** to never using your story, or that of another child killed by a Russian strike, as a mere rhetorical tool meant to generate outrage without substance. Every future mention of **Kharkiv** in my writing will rest on verified facts, not gratuitous emotional exploitation. This **discipline** is not a stylistic luxury: it is a fundamental ethical requirement for anyone writing about a war where propaganda, on both sides, constantly seeks to weaponize human suffering for political ends. ### Continuing to name, even as fatigue sets in I know that the **repetition of tallies** eventually produces a kind of fatigue among readers and columnists alike. It is precisely against this fatigue that I choose to fight, by continuing to name every victim that circumstances allow me to honestly document. Your story, incomplete as it is in my account, adds to a collective memory that I refuse to see erased under the weight of the months and years of war accumulating since **February 2022**. ## Conclusion: what I take from this unfinished letter ### A letter with no living recipient, but with a clear purpose This **open letter** will never reach you, and that is precisely its tragedy. But it may reach **readers** who, in turn, will refuse to consider your death as a mere statistical line in this war's macabre count. I end this letter with the same **powerlessness** I felt when starting it, but also with the conviction that documenting, naming, refusing to forget remains a duty, however tiny against the scale of this war. ### What I wish for Kharkiv, and for you I wish for Kharkiv to one day know **peace**, a real peace, not a fragile truce threatened at every moment by new glide bombs. I wish that no more fifteen-year-old would die under a Russian bomb while walking home on an ordinary afternoon. I can promise you nothing more than this letter, but I owe it to you, and to all those who, like you, paid with their lives for a war they did not choose. **By Maxime Marquette, columnist** ## Columnist's transparency note ### Editorial stance I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies. I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events. ### Method and sources This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here. **Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies. **Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations. When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**. ### Nature of the analysis The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted. My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors. This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text. ## Sources ### Primary sources - [Gwara Media — Russia hits Kharkiv with 7 glide bombs, killing 15-year-old boy, injuring at least 32 people — July 1, 2026](https://gwaramedia.com/en/im-ready-to-tear-putins-throat-out-russia-hits-kharkiv-with-7-glide-bombs-killing-15-years-old-boy-injuring-at-least-32-people-photos/) - [Ukrainska Pravda — Russia launches 5 strikes on Kharkiv, 2 people killed and 26 injured — July 1, 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/01/8041941/) ### Secondary sources - [SOFX — Russian Guided Bomb Attacks on Kharkiv Kill 15-Year-Old Boy, Injure 32 — July 2, 2026](https://www.sofx.com/russian-guided-bomb-attacks-on-kharkiv-kill-15-year-old-boy-injure-32/) - [The Straits Times — Russian strikes in Ukraine kill six, wound dozens — July 2, 2026](https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/russian-strikes-in-ukraine-kill-six-wound-dozens) - [Fakti.bg — Two killed, including 15-year-old boy, in Russian airstrike on Kharkiv — July 1, 2026](https://fakti.bg/en/world/1064801-dvama-zaginali-vkluchitelno-15-godishno-momche-pri-ruski-udar-po-harkov) - [RBC-Ukraine — Russia launches series of guided bomb strikes — July 1, 2026](https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-launches-series-of-guided-bomb-strikes-1782918996.html) --- Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-lettre-ouverte-a-lenfant-de-novobavarskyi-tue-par-sept-bombes-russes