Trapped in a shaking building as cylinders blew up: Stories from Kyiv’s latest nightmare amid Russia's attack

The morning after the massive attack sounds like glass scraping against asphalt, the hum of machinery, and muted conversations. Overnight into Tuesday, Russia launched another 70 missiles and more than 650 drones at Ukraine, with the capital as a primary target. At least six Kyiv residents were killed, and 10 times as many were injured.

“I am hardly a panicker. But when this does not affect your family, or you, or your neighbors,” says Tetiana, a resident of the damaged building in the Podilskyi district. Amid the smoky debris, she walks with a small bucket containing containers of half-cooked noodles.

The woman spent the entire night in the stairwell, listening to the explosions and the way the building’s frame cracked around her. Two strikes landed directly on the structure near her section. Then gas cylinders began exploding, causing further destruction.

They managed to get outside only after rescuers unblocked the front doors, which had been pinned shut by cars from the parking lot and fallen trees. The scene around them looked like the apocalypse: trees ripped from the ground, streetlights toppled, cars burned to shells and fragments of what Russian forces had used to attack sleeping Kyivans.

“This is, of course, shocking,” Tetiana says. In her view, what helped them survive was intuition, or maybe just luck: “You know, it probably came out intuitively. We did not go outside. For some reason, we gathered on the ninth floor, and everyone sat there.”

“You see, God protected us, while everyone downstairs was hurt. Our stairwell is quite well protected by the walls. We were shaken badly, and we prayed there. But, thank God, it passed, because our neighbor went outside with her daughter, and we do not know where she is or what happened to her.

I called her, but another neighbor picked up the phone. I said, ‘Why do you have her phone?’ And she said: ‘We found her bag, her documents. There was a lot of blood. We do not know where she is, whether she is alive, or else,” says Larysa, a resident of the ninth floor in the same building.

While crews continue clearing the rubble, a young woman films the destruction for her “kitty.” Two men in work gloves head off to help remove debris: “Sanya, I had a balcony here — well, I used to, ha-ha.”

Meanwhile, another elderly woman — small and tired — approaches Tetiana and Larysa.

“Have you already been to your apartment?”

“I am just coming from work.”

“Shura, it is better not to see it. Go on, my little one. The main thing is not to panic. Just do not get too upset. They are giving out plastic sheeting over there, behind the building.”

“They called me at work and said the window in my bedroom shook hard.”

“I do not think it just shook, Shura.”

"The main thing is that we survived"

The building where Tetiana and Larysa live is one of those hit hardest. By morning, it had no gas or water, and most of its residents are elderly. Aid organizations quickly arrived at the site, offering hot meals and plastic film to cover broken windows. Small but necessary help.

“I have a bedridden mother, 93 years old. She does not walk, and she sees and hears poorly, so she does not perceive it the same way. But we, of course, are shaken. I tell my husband, ‘Cook the porridge, and I will go get water to wash her and change her diaper.’ I stepped outside and thought: How is he going to cook without gas or electricity? And then a neighbor said soup was being handed out, so ‘go get something to eat',’” Tetiana says.

Neighbors immediately began checking on one another. Larysa calls herself a “veteran” of the building: “I have been here from the first day, everyone knows me. We all look out for one another and stay in touch. Our section is very friendly in general.”

As we climb floor by floor, the women stop by neighbors to direct them to the plastic sheeting and food, and by apartments to check on their residents. Tetiana gives one of the containers of noodles to a bedridden neighbor. Then she looks in on another apartment, where a man with a mental disorder lives with his elderly mother.

Larysa carries similar containers up to her own apartment. There, an elderly man — also bedridden — waits for her. The Russian strikes forced him to spend the night sitting on a stool.

Aside from the blown-out windows, Larysa’s apartment seems to have come through the attack relatively well. “Not a single magnet fell!” she says about her collection that covers the refrigerator on all sides — a souvenir from her work in tourism.

The woman said the last time something hit so close to her home was back in March 2022. That damaged building has already been repaired and re-clad.

“They fixed it up nicely. I hope they will do the same for us. But the main thing is that everyone survived,” the woman says.