From every façade you can hear the rattling of hammers. The residents of kyiv’s Jurchatova street are insulating the windows broken by the explosion with plastics distributed by the City Council. The explosion was caused by a Russian ballistic missile intercepted by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile early Thursday morning. Broken glass on every corner and hundreds of shocked neighbors. Two women and a nine-year-old girl were killed when rocket debris fell on them while trying to access a closed shelter. The Prosecutor’s Office investigates what happened.
“It was one more night of terror, but this time it sounded much louder, as if the sky were collapsing,” explains Valeria Ligotska, a neighbor of this neighborhood in the Desnianskii district, on the left bank of the Dnieper River, through tears. Ligotska is 27 years old and is the mother of a two-year-old boy. The remains of the missiles fell on the clinic where she takes her son for pediatrician check-ups. 50 meters away is the kindergarten where the child goes. In her building there is no bomb shelter, she says, and the whole month of May they have spent the nights under the bed. Russia has attacked the Ukrainian capital 18 times in the past month, with a record number of drone bombs and ballistic missiles, including the Iskander that killed her two neighbors and the nine-year-old girl.
The Ukrainians had grown used to the Russian threat. In recent months, there were almost no citizens running for a dugout when the air raid alarms go off. Since this year, in addition, in kyiv the anti-aircraft defenses have created a system so effective that 90% of the drones and missiles are shot down. But things have changed this May, says Ligotska: “We have gone from almost no one seeking shelter to 50% of people running to one.”
The Ukrainians are learning to identify which weapons Russia uses to bomb their towns only by the time that passes between the alarms going off and the explosions beginning. Russia is using ballistic missiles such as the Iskander and hypersonic missiles such as the Kinzhal against kyiv for the first time. “Sirens blared and three minutes later the explosion knocked me out of bed,” recalls Vadim Onishenko, a resident of the building opposite the clinic. “I saw the broken glass and window frames, I cut myself on the glass, I grabbed my cat and hunkered down in the corridor, between two walls,” Onishenko explains. In his building there is no basement to hide.
The same thing happened with the three deceased people: in their block, next to Vadim’s, there is also no shelter and they crossed the park that separated their house from the clinic to take refuge there. The entrance was closed, the husband of one of the victims explained to journalists. As they searched for a way in, the missiles rained down on them. The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office investigates the reasons why the only shelter in the neighborhood was closed. The neighbors consulted believe that the hospital security guard did not have time to open the place: from the time the sirens were activated until the arrival of the Iskanders, only a few minutes passed.
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“The man may have been asleep and not attentive enough,” adds Onishenko. “The explosion was four minutes after the alarm, it is a clinic that is not open at night, they did not have time to arrive,” says Nina Povadenova, a neighbor of the neighborhood and a teacher at a local music school. A spokesman for the kyiv prosecutor specifically asked the media and the authorities not to jump to conclusions about possible responsibilities.
Povadenova confirms that the basements of the clinic are the only space that can serve as a shelter in her area. She hasn’t spent a single hour in that shelter so far in the war, she prefers the comfort of her house. Neither is her friend and classmate at music school, Natalia Laptiva: “I stay at home and from the window I see how the anti-aircraft missiles cross, every day explosions, more repeated every day.”
Onishenko stresses that the basements of the clinic are an unsanitary and unventilated place. He only spent one night in it, at the beginning of the invasion, in March 2022, when kyiv was besieged by Russian troops. “In our buildings there are no basements either, the City Council should build safe spaces”, he affirms. The death of the three residents of the Desnianskii district have opened a debate in kyiv about the lack of shelters in conditions and accessible in a short time. Not all buildings have garages or basements, and in public spaces, metro stations are the main points where citizens who want to protect themselves still find shelter (especially during the day).
For Ligotska there is no option but to continue protecting herself under the bed with her husband and baby. The clinic is too far from her apartment—a kilometer. Asked if she would move to a bunker or a basement set up by the municipal administration near her home, she admits that she probably would, although she has doubts: “It would not solve the fact that these weeks we cannot rest practically not even one night, and the child Whether it’s on the floor or in a basement, he’s terrified.”
Multiple citizens came during the day to lay flowers in front of the place where the two women and the girl died. Ligotska also brought her offering, and repeated to the international media that they wanted to interview her the same thing that its president, Volodimir Zelenski, said this Thursday at the European summit in Moldova: that Ukraine’s allies provide more air defense systems. “We want to build our lives, be at peace, and Russia won’t let us, we need the help of our friends.”
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