A Ukrainian family exploded in a Russian missile strike. “Yesterday, one more body part was found,” says Vyacheslav Patlanj, who lost his wife and child, at the ruins of his home.
Dnipro
Neighborhood is calm.
Ordinary two- to three-story detached houses and nice gardens behind painted fences. Šišina street is an unpaved road between houses.
At house number three, a startling sight appears, which is difficult to comprehend at first.
The house is missing. The whole building is literally not there. There is a huge moat, at least ten meters wide and estimated to be almost as deep.
Two days ago, on Thursday, September 29, at 0:55 AM, a huge missile came crashing down from the sky. It blew the whole detached house and the people inside it to pieces. Stone walls, pieces of the roof and body parts were thrown dozens of meters into the yards of neighboring houses in the pressure wave.
A missile strike killed the residents of house number three, a Ukrainian family. They had sent text messages to wish good night to their family members who were elsewhere and gone to bed.
Then they exploded.
In a house missile number three killed four people.
Grandmother Shiloh belowborn in 1961.
His grown daughter Natalija Patlanjborn in 1984.
Natalia’s children: Vasilisa-girl, nine years. Ivan-son, seven years.
Pictures from the family’s photo album were found among the debris of the destroyed detached house.
On Saturday, a man who is still in a state of shock walks by the side of the mountain half day. He looks at the rubble left from the house, the boards broken into small pieces and the pieces of the stone wall. A black walking shoe, a light blue bunny plush toy, and a turquoise bathrobe belt stand out among the clutter.
“I can’t even say their names out loud now,” he says Sergei Shilo painfully. “They were my family, my loved ones.”
Alla, who was killed in the attack, was his wife. They were married since 1984.
All that was left of the house was a basement apartment located slightly to the side, on top of which the building was wiped out in the explosion. There are still glass jars in which tomatoes have been preserved on the shelf in the basement.
The cellar and the canned goods on its shelves were left behind when the outbuilding on top was wiped out in a missile strike.
Ukrainian authorities are investigating Thursday’s Russian missile strike as a war crime. And the hallmarks of a war crime are obvious.
Those killed were civilians. The house was located in a civilian area in the middle of single-family blocks in Slahovka, on the southern edge of the big city of Dnipro in central Ukraine. It is about a hundred kilometers to the war front.
According to preliminary information from the Ukrainian authorities, Russia used a Soviet-made Kh-22 cruise missile in the attack. It is a massive weapon of destruction designed to sink ships. The missile’s warhead, i.e. the part containing the explosives, weighs a ton. The missile can also be equipped with a nuclear warhead.
The range of the missile is 600 kilometers. It could be launched from a plane really far away. However, information about the weapon has not yet been confirmed.
In any case, an airstrike on a detached house in a residential area is absurd. It is possible that the missile went astray. Of course, that doesn’t mitigate the crime.
The house destroyed in the missile strike is located in the Slahovka residential area on the southern edge of the Dnipro city of millions.
The family the destruction by missile attracted widespread attention in Ukraine, even though Ukrainians’ everyday life is full of shocks. Even the president’s wife shared pictures of the explosion crater and the remains of the family on social media Olena Zelenska. Many shared a picture of the only survivor of the attack, a sad-eyed dog named Krim. The dog is named after the Crimean peninsula, which belongs to Ukraine but is occupied by Russia.
After the night explosion, under the lights of the rescue workers, the neighbors saw a Crimean dog standing by the blast hole, panicking.
“It seemed to me as if the dog had cried too,” says the neighbor Lubov Levchenko . The kitchen of his home was destroyed and carpets flew off the floor in the pressure wave, although there is one house in between.
“That house saved my life.”
Another neighbor, who lives in the opposite house Nikolai Novastroinih came after smoke and dust settled out of his house. A severed arm lay on the ground in front of the courtyard gate.
“Part of the child’s body flew into our garden,” says Novastroinih.
Neighbor Nikolai Novastroinih found a blown-off arm in front of his gate that belonged to one of the residents of the destroyed neighboring house.
In the first pictures the crater left by the missile is almost empty. Everything was thrown away. Now, two days later, the pit is full of the remains of the building and fragmented furniture, as rescue workers and researchers have moved the wreckage with machines.
At the bottom of the pit walks a man with an empty gaze. He’s holding a bunch of photos he’s picked out of the wreckage.
Vyacheslav Patlanj found a photo of his child as a baby at the bottom of the crater made by the missile.
Vyacheslav Patlany lost his wife, two children and mother-in-law in a missile strike. He himself was not at home because he was doing what he has been doing since spring: fighting against the Russian invaders.
On Thursday, Patlanj was on the eastern front near Kramatorsk, carrying out a mission. He says that he returned to the base at five in the afternoon and sent Natalija’s wife a text message.
“I asked him to buy me a new belt. The old one is worn out,” says Vyacheslav Patlanj in Russian, which is his and his family’s mother tongue.
Natalija’s wife worked as an architect, designed new houses in Ukraine. During the war, he worked from his home. The children also went to school as distance learning via the internet. On Thursday night, the work was done, the games were played. At ten in the evening, Natalia still sent a message to her husband at the front.
“We joked about the size of the belt. We wished for beautiful dreams.”
A small memorial has been placed on the edge of Montu. Flowers brought by neighbors and friends. Someone has put a beautiful drawing of a woman, two children and a dog next to it. Vasilisa’s orange tiger plush toy is leaning against the flowers. On the ground is Ivan’s school notebook, which is decorated with a picture Car pool– from the series of drawings. On the cover, Ivan has written his name and the text: “Ukrainian language workbook.” Second class.”
Patlanj saw his family for the last time a week and a half ago, on September 20. He had come home from the front on leave.
“When I was leaving, my son hugged me for a very long time,” says Patlanj.
“They were always afraid that I would die at the front. The opposite happened.”
A small memorial has been placed on the side of the hill where the house is located.
The toy that belonged to the family’s children has been placed on a small memorial at the edge of the explosion crater.
The explosion of the huge missile shattered the walls and twisted the spoons into a bend.
Russia conducts airstrikes against Ukrainian civilians practically every day. The worst is on the front line. But Russia also carries out airstrikes tens or even hundreds of kilometers away from the front. This week, Russia has struck civilian targets in, for example, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhia and here in Dnipro. With missiles, rockets, drones. To the pedestrian street, bus stop, car market, residential buildings.
Dnipro is a city of one and a half million inhabitants. There are tower blocks, parks, museums, bridges over the mighty Dnieper. Life in the city looks almost normal during the day. Restaurants are open, people go to work and buses run according to schedule.
But Russian terror can strike anytime and anywhere.
In the ruins of his destroyed home, Patlanj raises his head and asks. Where were you from? From Finland?
Then Vyacheslav Patlanj says in Finnish:
“Blueberry.”
“Cowberry.”
“Suonejoki.”
Since 2015, Patlanj has been going to Finland in the summer to pick berries to earn extra income for his family.
In February, when Russia attacked Ukraine, Patlanj suggested to his wife that they all go to Finland for safety.
“The wife didn’t want to. He doesn’t like traveling to strange places. That’s how we stayed.”
What if. It is now Patlanj a painful thought.
Vyacheslav Patlanj was at the front fighting when a missile hit his family’s home.
Grandfather Sergei Shilo also has a difficult thought to deal with. Previously, he and the whole family lived on Kirov Street near the airport. After the war started in February, Russia carried out a lot of bombings, and the family was scared. The family had been left with an empty detached house when Shilo’s mother had died.
“I brought the family here. This is a quiet area. I thought it was safe here,” says Shilo.
Now he blames himself.
“I was just trying to bring them to safety,” the grandfather says and breaks down.
Sergei Shilo lost his wife, daughter and grandchild in the attack.
War crimes will be studied for a long time. In Ukraine, the investigation is carried out by the local authorities. In many cases, international researchers help. However, war crimes are rarely brought to justice.
According to official statistics, around 6,000 civilians have died in the war in Ukraine since February 24. The real number of victims may be in the tens of thousands, as there are mass graves and ruins in the areas held by Russia, which no one has investigated.
Patlanj does not yet know when his family’s funeral will be held. The criminal investigation is ongoing. And there is also a macabre problem: not all body parts scattered in the neighborhood have necessarily been found yet.
“One more body part was found yesterday.”
About 7.5 million Ukrainians have fled their homes. Cities have been crushed. The European economy is in crisis. In his frenzied speeches, Putin threatens nuclear war. Right now it seems that Putin can only be stopped by war.
Vyacheslav Patlanj’s nickname is Slava. It means honor.
After the family funeral is held, will you go back to war?
“Of course.”
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