Kyiv’s darkest night: A missile strike’s toll on a residential building

In the courtyards, humanitarian tents are set up, surrounded by hundreds of residents. Some bustle about, sweeping up glass and queuing for plywood and tarps. Others collapse in place, weeping, retreating from journalists.

A residential building in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district took a direct hit from a Russian cruise missile during a massive attack on the capital. An entire section collapsed. The death toll rose throughout the day.

Whose lives were claimed by the Russian missile? Who miraculously survived a fall from the ninth floor? And who lived but wished they were under the rubble instead of their children? This is hromadske’s report.

“Is that the building? My wife and father-in-law are there!”

Natalia woke to a loud explosion around 4:40 a.m. Her apartment was littered with glass. At first, she didn’t realize the neighboring building’s section had been destroyed—everything was shrouded in smoke and flames, pierced by screams.

“I started packing my laptop. Barefoot, I grabbed a working laptop, put on one of my husband’s shoes and some rubber one, and ran outside in my nightgown, as I’d been sleeping,” says Natalia Mazina, a hromadske journalist.

With minor injuries, she and her husband were taken to the hospital. Ambulances, she says, were in short supply—they waited two hours. A conversation in the hospital stuck with her:

“A young man comes out and asks, ‘Where was the strike?’ I give the address. He goes pale and says, ‘Is that the building near the ATB [supermarket]?’ I say, ‘Yes…’ He replies, ‘My wife and father-in-law are in that section…”

People approach each other, asking about loved ones, hoping for any news.

“Have you seen them? I’m looking for my godfather and goddaughter. She’s 18,” a man asks.

“No. From which floor?”

“The third.”

“We’re waiting on the fourth… Hold on, they carried out Mishka from the fourth. Already in a body bag.”

“Carried out? Dead?”

“Dead…” residents murmur among themselves.

Among them is a woman searching for a relative in the collapsed section. She explains it’s her husband’s brother’s wife, whose husband went missing in the war. She was 40, living there with her mother and brother.

“Her brother somehow managed to jump out… He ended up right at the edge of the collapse. An ambulance is treating him somewhere…” Iryna says, adding, “I guess Irka’s probably reunited with her Taras now.”

Support hromadske

“How can you fall nine floors and only break a leg?”

Maksym is from a neighboring building. He was among the first to rush to the strike site.

“Everything was on fire. We ran out here immediately, asking if anyone was still in the building, in that corner entrance… One guy was stuck, couldn’t open his door. We broke it down to free him.”

He also carried a girl who fell from the ninth floor to an ambulance. He couldn’t believe she survived.

“She only broke her leg. We carried her on a stretcher to the ambulance because it couldn’t get close,” Maksym says.

News agency TSN reported the girl’s name is Veronika. She was thrown out with her bed but doesn’t remember landing. It happened in an instant.

“I heard the explosion, and a second later, I was on the ground. I don’t know how. How do you fall nine floors and only break a leg?” she said. The fate of her parents remains unknown.

Born lucky was Olena, from the first floor of the collapsed section.

“Only the walls are left in the apartment. My husband and I were sleeping. We’d come back from a shelter after a drone attack and went to bed. Then the strike hit. My husband shielded me, glass rained down. I thought the blast wave just blew out our windows. But when I stepped out, there was no section,” she says.

“There are way more dead than they’re saying. Do you know how many people lived here? Probably four dead on the first floor. At least two on the second. Same on the third. Four on the fourth. A child died on the sixth…” Olena frets over everyone’s fate.

The six-year-old boy killed in the building was Matviy Marchenko, a karate student and “future champion,” according to the Kyiv karate club where he trained.

"God, how am I going to get through this?"

Standing by the caution tape, slightly apart from others, is an elderly woman in dusty clothes.

Kateryna Feodosiyivna, 66, tells a story that sends chills down the spine. Her first-floor apartment in the collapsed section saved her and her son—but became a tomb for her daughter and two grandsons. Their rooms faced the side where all nine floors caved in.

Her daughter, Natalia, had arrived the day before for medical appointments, bringing her 17-year-old son, Roman. Her older son, 21-year-old Vlad, lived there with his grandmother.

“She said, ‘I’ll stay the night, I won’t leave today.’ Now my daughter’s buried there… I looked—there’s just concrete. It’s all on them. On my grandsons, on my daughter…” the woman sobs, repeating:

“My little ones… My grandbabies… I wish I had died instead of my children!”

She’s lived in this building for over 30 years, having received the apartment in the ’90s as a janitor.

“Now there’s nothing left… But that’s fine. I don’t care about myself. I care about the kids. Why didn’t it take me? Why does it take young kids?! My little ones, my darlings…” Her words are unbearable without tears.

“There’s nothing around here. Why hit here?! What are they punishing us for? What? What do we owe you, you bastards?!”

I ask permission to hug her. She leans into my shoulder, sobbing harder.

“God, how do I survive this? How? I buried my husband… Now my children, my dear ones! God… I don’t know how I am going to get through this,” she says, choking on tears.

***

At the time of publication, the death toll in Kyiv reached 31.

Kyiv declared August 1 a day of mourning for those killed in the Russian attack.