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A Ukrainian State Emergency Service firefighter works to extinguish a fire at a damaged residential building in the town of Serhiivka, about 50 kilometres southwest of Odesa, Ukraine, on July 1.Nina Lyashonok/The Associated Press

On Friday, it was Odesa’s turn. Two missiles arced across the sky to strike an apartment block and a seaside hotel in the historic Black Sea port. Twenty-one more lives, including those of two children, randomly and senselessly cut short.

Four days earlier, it was a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, hit equally unexpectedly. Nineteen bodies have been recovered there, and dozens more shoppers and mall staff are still missing as rescue workers continue to dig through the ruins.

The day before that attack, Kyiv was the target. Missiles hit two residential buildings in the capital, killing one person. Civilian areas of cities such as Kharkiv and Mykolaiv have also been repeatedly struck in a week of death and mayhem.

Even up close, it was impossible to understand. Another catastrophe was likely averted last Sunday when a Russian cruise missile was shot out of the sky by Ukrainian air defences as The Globe and Mail drove through the commercial heart of Odesa. Less than 24 hours later, much of the Western press corps was standing in the parking lot of what had been the Amstor mall in Kremenchuk.

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None of this week’s targets were in the eastern Donbas region, where Russian forces continue to grind forward against an outgunned Ukrainian military, capturing the ruined city of Sieverodonetsk last week and this week pummelling neighbouring Lyscychansk, which is now the new front line. None of the strikes around the rest of Ukraine moved the Kremlin any closer to its avowed aims of “liberating” the Donbas region and ousting the government in Kyiv, which Moscow falsely claims is run by far-right figures.

The Ukrainian government has begun pushing for Russia to be named a state sponsor of terrorism, a designation usually reserved for countries that aid the likes of Hezbollah or Hamas. Except Russia isn’t being accused of supporting some lawless militant group – but rather behaving like one.

“Only totally insane terrorists, who should have no place on Earth, can strike missiles at civilian objects,” a furious Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel in the wake of the Kremenchuk attack. “These are not off-target missile strikes at kindergartens, schools, shopping malls, apartment buildings, these are calculated strikes of the invaders. Russia must be recognized as a state sponsor of terrorism. The world can and therefore must stop Russian terror.”

The Kremlin denies targeting civilians, and despite Mr. Zelensky’s impassioned plea there is reason to believe that the upsurge in seemingly random attacks may be partly owing to the fact that Russia is running low on the high-precision weapons it used at the start of the war. The apartment block and the hotel in Odesa, as well as the mall in Kremenchuk, were reportedly hit by Kh-22 anti-ship missiles, which have radar systems designed to hone in on enemy warships at sea, not specific buildings in crowded urban landscapes.

It’s equally plausible, however, that the missiles are a message from Moscow to Ukraine and its allies in the West. The Kremenchuk attack occurred just after the G7 meeting wrapped up in Germany with a vow to maintain sanctions against Russia for “as long as it takes.” Odesa was hit one day after the NATO summit concluded with a statement calling Russia “a significant and direct threat,” with the alliance confirming plans to expand its high-readiness force to 300,000 troops from the current 40,000.

Friday’s attack on Odesa also came one day after Russian troops were forced to withdraw from the strategic outcrop of Snake Island – just off the coast of Odesa – because of intense Ukrainian artillery fire. Retaking the island was the biggest symbolic win for Ukraine since the start of April, when Russia was forced to abandon its early attempt to seize Kyiv.

Seen in that light, Russia’s attacks this week meet the classic definition of terrorism: striking at civilians until the other side agrees to negotiate with you on more favourable terms. There’s no sign the West is willing to do that yet, and Kyiv gave an answer of its own Friday afternoon: The city centre was full of people enjoying a warm summer day. Just hours after the Odesa attack – and less than a week since the most recent strikes on the capital – music blared, and the shops and cafés on Khreshchatyk Street were bustling with customers.

Cities such as Kyiv and Odesa, which emptied out at the start of the war amid predictions that Russia would quickly defeat Ukraine’s smaller military, have returned to perhaps two-thirds of their pre-war normal. Many of those who fled have since returned, and restaurants and businesses abandoned in February and March are also coming back to life.

The new keep-calm-and-carry-on attitude comes with risks. The air-raid sirens that early in the war sent everyone scrambling into bomb shelters are now treated like just another noisy urban nuisance. In Kremenchuk, at least some of the victims died because stores remained open and shoppers kept shopping right up until the missile attack and explosion that set the mall on fire.

Even after that hard lesson, and all the civilian deaths this week, the sirens still largely go unheeded. After four months of relentless war, many Ukrainians are simply done with being terrorized.

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