KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine — In the mean time Russia launched the practically four-ton ballistic missile, an 8-year-old Ukrainian boy was working throughout a playground.
The missile was an Iskander 9M723, contemporary off an meeting line in Votkinsk, the place employees within the Russian heartland plug American expertise into the bellies of guided weapons, regardless of sanctions and export controls, Ukrainian investigators have discovered.
By late 2025, Russia had launched greater than 400 of the Iskander-M rockets. This one, which took flight on April 4, was the sixty fourth of the yr. The Kremlin claimed that it was concentrating on a gathering of navy officers at a restaurant, although surveillance footage confirmed solely civilians there.
The boy was second-grader Matviy Holovko. His hometown of Kryvyi Rih, an industrial hub the place Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky grew up, suffered such frequent bombardment that he’d grown used to sleeping within the hallway. Matviy couldn’t keep in mind life earlier than the full-scale warfare that began when he was 5. He knew how you can determine the roar of missiles and drones earlier than he might tie his sneakers or write his identify.
On this Friday night, the primary heat day of spring, Matviy was chasing his toddler nephew throughout the sand. The Ukrainian winter was thawing, the playground loud with kids. His mother and 28-year-old sister stood collectively, watching the boys play. For a second, the warfare felt blissfully far.
However the Iskander was whipping towards them. Twenty-three soccer fields a second. Six occasions the pace of sound.
Each time one in all these missiles lands, destroying energy crops, hospitals, church buildings and colleges, investigators seek for clues within the wreckage. Virtually each time, they be aware a disturbing element. Although the weapons are manufactured in Russia, they’re depending on parts from firms based mostly in different international locations, together with the USA. Investigators have discovered elements from Intel. Elements from Analog Units, finest recognized for its semiconductors. Elements from Texas Devices, well-known for its graphing calculators.
Map and desk displaying international locations that manufacture elements of the Iskander 9M723
Western parts present up on Ukrainian soil nightly, typically numbering greater than 100,000 in a single assault, Ukrainian officers say. A Senate subcommittee report revealed final yr mentioned that efforts by American firms to hint their merchandise into Russia’s warfare machine have been “abjectly missing.”
In emailed statements, Intel, Analog Units and Texas Devices equally mentioned that enterprise ceased in Russia after 2022 and that the businesses don’t help using their merchandise in Russian navy tools.
Items of this sixty fourth Iskander, too, had been later bagged, photographed and analyzed in order that investigators, someway, might try and decipher which firms and international locations to carry accountable. However in attempting to know a weapon so highly effective it destroys even proof of itself, the solutions are hardly ever simple. The assault, which killed 20 folks, together with 9 children, was declared the warfare’s single largest confirmed casualty of Ukrainian kids.
The night waning, Matviy and his mom, Vita Holovko, 50, mentioned goodbye to his sister, Anastasia Prava, and her toddler. They walked to a small store close to the playground for a deal with. For Vita, espresso and a cigarette. For Matviy, chocolate.
Air raid sirens wailed. Constructed to evade even probably the most superior air protection programs, the Iskander flew 250 miles from Russia’s Rostov area in about three minutes. It was too late to seek out shelter.
Matviy appeared up. He noticed it, a blur of black within the sky.
For a closing millisecond, the missile was entire.
At 6:50 p.m., it exploded.
‘A hell you may’t describe’
The place there’d as soon as been a playground, freshly painted in purple and inexperienced, there have been now solely splintered wooden, and small, slumped our bodies, and smoke.
In a close-by college gymnasium, glass stabbed the eyes of 13-year-old Karolina Liashenko as she performed volleyball. On the swings, shrapnel pierced the abdomen and shredded the organs of 4-year-old Yaroslav Bykhno and carved by way of the our bodies of 15-year-olds Danylo Nikitskyi and Alina Kutsenko as they walked hand in hand. Within the again seat of his dad and mom’ automobile, it killed 7-year-old Radyslav Yatsko whereas the remainder of his household, sitting round him, lived.
“It was simply hell, a hell you may’t describe,” mentioned his mom, Anna Yatsko, 32, who was within the passenger seat holding her toddler daughter, diaper prickling with damaged glass.
Fragments of flaming-hot metal shot by way of the partitions of the store, spraying vodka onto the ground. Out entrance, Vita had simply sufficient time to cowl Matviy’s physique together with her personal. Having absorbed the worst of the blast, she crumpled to the bottom. Crimson bloomed on her winter coat. Matviy’s left arm was shredded, the bone snapped, the nerves and tendons severed.
The shopkeeper, fearing a second missile, urged Matviy and his mother to the protection of a close-by constructing. When Vita didn’t transfer, the shopkeeper dragged solely Matviy together with her. A police officer lashed on a tourniquet and sped him to a hospital, navigating by way of the our bodies and burning automobiles. Greater than 70 folks sought medical therapy that day, native officers mentioned.
By the point Matviy’s father, Kostiantyn Holovko, 58, arrived on the scene, nobody was attempting to save lots of Vita. He stood by his spouse’s physique for 5 hours, till the coroner arrived. Then he headed to the hospital to seek out his son, who was with Anastasia. He couldn’t convey himself to inform the boy that his mom was gone.
Within the coming days, Matviy went out and in of three surgical procedures, all attempting to save lots of his arm. None labored. He wakened from the ultimate operation to find that his pores and skin had been rounded right into a stump just under his left shoulder.
“It’s gone,” he mentioned flatly, taking a look at his dad.
“I’ll inform you later,” Kostiantyn replied.
‘Purposefully, relentlessly’
It was already darkish when a pair of investigators from the SBU, Ukraine’s foremost inside safety service, arrived on the playground.
Early experiences from the Ukrainian air power indicated that it was a ballistic missile. Geared up with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead, it blew up midair, then plowed an 11-foot crater into the bottom. Hundreds of shards of metal shot in each route, splintering home windows, slashing tree branches, puncturing the metallic slide, splashing blood within the sandbox.
The investigators, who spoke on the situation of anonymity in step with safety service protocols, hunted for clues. Suspecting a 9M723, they stored an eye fixed out for greater than two dozen overseas elements recognized to be within the Iskander.
Ukraine’s navy intelligence company, generally known as HUR, catalogues these parts in a public database. By 2024, the company had recognized round 2,800 overseas parts in Russian weapons. By late 2025, that quantity surpassed 5,200. About 70 p.c of the elements come from firms headquartered in the USA.
HUR discovered that guarantees made by the U.S. Division of Commerce in 2022 to “severely limit Russia’s entry to applied sciences” had fallen quick. The Commerce Division didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Because the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion neared, the Senate Everlasting Subcommittee on Investigations, a panel of the Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee, met to query executives from 4 firms that manufactured nearly all of recovered American elements. A year-long investigation by the subcommittee’s Democratic workers discovered that some firms had “finished the naked minimal required by regulation … whereas attempting to scrub their fingers of any actual accountability for his or her distributors’ position in Russian diversion.”
“Russian bombs, missiles and drones supported by American applied sciences are actually killing Ukrainians,” subcommittee Chairman Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) advised executives from Texas Devices, Analog Units, Superior Micro Units (AMD) and Intel in late 2024. “Not simply Ukrainian troopers, however civilians, ladies, kids, of their sleep, in hospitals, in colleges, purposefully, relentlessly.”
The executives testified that there was little extra they may do. Texas Devices mentioned that the corporate “devotes vital time and assets to maintain chips out of the fingers of unhealthy actors” and “grieve[s] with these impacted.” Analog Units mentioned it was “at all times working to enhance.” AMD had “redoubled our efforts … to stop diversion,” and Intel continued to “stand with the folks of Ukraine.”
In emailed statements in early December, Texas Devices mentioned that it “opposes using our chips in Russian navy tools.” Intel “take[s] these points very significantly.” AMD is “dedicated to full compliance.” Analog Units added that “combating the unauthorized resale, diversion, and misuse of merchandise and applied sciences is a problem your complete semiconductor trade faces.”
No straightforward answer was discovered that day. Microelectronics, which trickle by way of unsanctioned international locations corresponding to China and Turkey, are practically unattainable to trace from producer to rocket missile, mentioned one Ukrainian intelligence official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
“The one method we will meaningfully cease [the flow of components into Russia] is a regulation that places the accountability onto the corporate, that means that it’s your job as a producer to make it possible for your parts don’t attain Russia,” mentioned Pavlo Shkurenko, a sanctions analysis fellow on the Kyiv Faculty of Economics Institute. “It is extremely unlikely that one of these regulation will occur as a result of these are highly effective firms.”
On and close to the playground in Kryvyi Rih, investigators discovered chunks of the missile’s fuselage, braided and burned polymers from electrical conductors, fragments of the gasoline tank, and slivers of the rudders. Some items had been stamped with still-legible serial numbers, proving that this missile was, certainly, an Iskander 9M723.
Diagram illustrates the dimensions of the missile
The missile, which carried 1,000 kilos of lethal explosives, was lowered to 83 fire-scarred hunks of metallic. The investigators by no means recovered the microelectronics of the steering system. They had been in all probability sourced from American firms, a number of weapons specialists mentioned, and ensured the missile’s accuracy as much as 10 meters. Sufficiently small to carry in a single hand, these elements incinerated on affect.
A boy amid troopers
Kostiantyn by no means discovered what to say to Matviy.
As an alternative of explaining what occurred on the playground, he lied, telling him that his mother was additionally within the hospital, sleeping.
Somebody wanted to be trustworthy with the 8-year-old. Anastasia, his older sister, knew it must be her. She’d been current when their mom gave beginning, catching Matviy in her arms, the primary to carry him. They’d shared tough conversations earlier than, together with when Matviy and Vita fled to Lithuania for security after Russia’s invasion, their household separated for half a yr. However she struggled to elucidate the warfare to a toddler who already knew an excessive amount of about it.
“Russia is attacking us,” she advised Matviy. “Children are being killed. Mother and father are being killed. Sadly, our mother … couldn’t make it. Her physique left us, however she is going to keep within the sky and in your coronary heart perpetually.”
Matviy didn’t react.
Usually upbeat with a big-cheeked smile, he missed his mother and was ashamed of his amputation. When the nonprofit Superhumans, which focuses on prostheses, rehabilitation and reconstructive surgical procedure, contacted his sister about offering his first prosthetic arm, Matviy couldn’t make up his thoughts. Anastasia reminded him that he wasn’t the one injured youngster in Ukraine.
So, after spending a month in Dnipro on the area’s greatest trauma hospital, Matviy moved to the rehabilitation heart in western Ukraine to be fitted with the primary of dozens prostheses that he would wish as he grew. He and his father shared a room, their twin beds separated by a desk topped with Lego. Matviy unfold out his favourite Spider-Man blanket. His instructor mailed homework.
He was usually the youngest affected person wandering the hallways of amputees, a boy amid troopers.
At dwelling in Kryvyi Rih, Anastasia stripped their mom’s condo of recollections, changing the home windows shattered by the missile and boxing up her garments. Simply across the nook, she prevented the reopened espresso store and the playground, the place the faces of 9 kids had been propped in a sea of toys.
It was now fall, the funerals lengthy over. Grass overgrew the sandbox. Rain softened the plush animals. Twenty silver bells, for every of the victims, tinkled eerily in a tree. The households left behind wished it could all be bulldozed and changed with a correct memorial.
And nonetheless the air raid sirens wailed.
The perpetrators
By mid-November, the investigators from the SBU had been finalizing a report that spanned 15 chapters and three,750 pages.
They discovered that the first Missile Brigade of the forty ninth Mixed Arms Military of the Southern Navy District was answerable for launching the Iskander.
Extra particularly, they alleged that Col. Gen. Aleksey Kim, chief of workers for Russia’s Joint Group of Forces, and his deputy, Vice Adm. Alexander Peshkov, head of the Joint Heart for Planning and Coordination of Enemy Fireplace Harm, organized and led the assault.
To plan and put together it, they relied on Rear Adm. Aleksey Petrushyn, chief of the Intelligence Administration and Fireplace Harm Coordination Heart of the joint Russian navy grouping, and Col. Alexander Kisiedobriev, head of the missile forces and artillery directorate of the joint navy grouping.
Ukraine charged the 4 males in absentia with warfare crimes. Russia’s Ministry of Protection didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Ukrainian investigators wished some accountability for the assault, whose youngest victims had been the identical ages as their very own kids. They hope to see the boys in The Hague sometime.
This case was nearly finished, however their work was unrelenting. Daily, extra missiles and drones slammed into cities throughout Ukraine. Civilians stored dying, and warfare crimes accrued within the hundreds. Unmarked vans shuttled weapon fragments to regional forensics labs for evaluation, then onward to storage. Within the graveyards of metallic had been dark-bellied Shaheds, cumbersome Kinzhals and smooth-nosed Iskanders. Overseas parts had been ghosts of their midst.
Satellite tv for pc information and public data confirmed the enlargement of the Votkinsk Machine Constructing Plant, the place Iskanders are mass-produced. New workshops, hundreds of further employees. Manufacturing tripled from 2022 to 2025.
The plant now averages about 60 to 70 new Iskanders per thirty days, mentioned aviation professional and navy analyst Kostiantyn Kryvolap, a former take a look at engineer on the Antonov Design Bureau in Kyiv. The Iskander’s accuracy and skill to evade air protection stay depending on Western parts, which Russia has not managed to switch with its personal elements, he mentioned.
By late 2025, the Kremlin was launching 12 occasions extra Iskanders than in 2023. The amount of Shahed drones elevated 20 occasions over in the identical two-year interval.
“To counter Iskanders, you must begin with the Votkinsk plant,” Kryvolap mentioned.
The 83 shards of the playground missile remained in storage till late November. Then they had been delivered to an unmarked SBU constructing in jap Ukraine. Double-bagged to stop the metallic from ripping by way of, the practically 200-pound sack was maneuvered by two males into the basement, the place the investigators had been ready. With every step, the metallic clanked.
Chilly and oily to the contact, some items had been as small as a pencil eraser. Others had been as massive as a bowling ball.
“Simply think about, one piece going on the pace of 1,000 kilometers per hour, what occurs to an individual struck,” one of many investigators mentioned, palming a fraction. “Even a chunk so small, it’s finished.”
A slip of paper with a quantity was all that recognized the bag.
Every other boy
Winter was descending once more, the yr coming to a detailed. Anastasia took her brother’s good hand, strolling Matviy dwelling from soccer apply by way of streets darkened by energy cuts. On his different facet was his dad.
The empty sleeve of Matviy’s coat was tucked into his pocket so it would resemble an arm. Because the headlights of passing automobiles despatched their shadows lengthy then quick, he appeared like another boy.
However he by no means could be.
He had misplaced a lot to the warfare. Some losses the world might see, like a lacking limb and mom, and others it couldn’t. His childhood. His safety. His sense of security.
He nonetheless doesn’t like answering questions on that day on the playground or what stays of his left arm, which he named “Dragon.” Although he’s delicate to folks staring, he prefers to not put on his prosthesis, which pinches following his newest progress spurt. Quickly, he’ll return to Lviv to get a brand new one.
He’s been pressured to be taught to simply accept the assistance of others. His dad joins him within the musty locker room earlier than soccer apply to assist shimmy on his jersey. In school, when the air raid sirens blare, his classmates assist him race from their third-floor classroom into the shelter. At dwelling, Anastasia has moved in together with her toddler to offer further help.
The trio walked on, the sleeve slipping from Matviy’s pocket and hanging loosely. Someplace up forward was the playground the place he and the opposite kids used to play a sport referred to as “catch the missile,” lobbing a toy within the air and hoping it wouldn’t land.
He not performs there.
In moments when he feels overwhelmed, Matviy disappears on-line into coding or the digital world of Roblox. He’s saving up for particular gear to guard him from the sport’s monster. Right here, a minimum of, he’ll be secure.
About this story
Catherine Belton in London; Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia; Mary Ilyushina in Berlin; and Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv; contributed to this report.
Pictures by Carolyn Van Houten. Design and improvement by Lucy Naland and Yutao Chen. Graphics by Júlia Ledur and William Neff. Enhancing by Paul Schemm, Natalia Jiménez, Adrián Blanco Ramos, Virginia Singarayar and Joe Moore.
