A new Russian attack on Friday morning (18) hit an area near a housing project in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. The place still has residents, mainly elderly people living alone and people with physical disabilities, which makes it impossible for them to get around without help.
As happened in previous days, the action, which left one dead and four injured, opened a crater in the affected region. The complex houses several five-story buildings, separated by a gap used as parking and leisure area. As the buildings were not directly hit by the attack, the destruction is the result of the shock wave, heat and shrapnel generated by the explosion.
Sitting amidst the rubble of the small room that until early this morning was his kitchen, Roman, a man with a hoarse voice and trembling hands, arms and legs, smoked a cigarette he got from one of the journalists who came in and out of the destroyed apartments. by the Moscow attack.
He also drank the leftover soup from a pot left open on the stove covered in a fine dust of cement and concrete. He talked to himself, saying he didn’t know where to go or what to do. “It was a very good neighborhood here, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.”
Like Roman, many were trying to make sense of what was happening. They cleaned the hallways full of broken glass and twisted iron and walked up and down the congested stairs carrying buckets of rubble, as if trying to rebuild their lives as quickly as possible.
Sinaida Grigorievna, 75, sat crying on a bed as a volunteer named Ihor helped her fix the lock on the door. Her apartment, with a large red rug hanging from the wall like a painting, was on the other side of where the explosion had taken place. Her furniture, her clothes and her life were saved by the walls between the blast and the room she was in.
Trying to calm her down, Ihor, who in peacetime was a cook in an Italian restaurant, sang in a somewhat crooked way the song “Ti Voglio​ Bene Assai” (I love you so much), by Massimo Ranieri. I wanted to comfort the lady who was crying not only for the destruction that, because she had not left the apartment, she had not yet seen, but to reassure her due to the death of her plants, spilled on the floor of one of the bedrooms and the kitchen, both rooms virtually intact.
The Russian army continues to face problems advancing towards the Ukrainian capital. According to the government of the invaded country, Kremlin troops are having to bear thousands of casualties, and in a video shared on the internet, Ukrainian fighters showed photos of the bodies of Russian soldiers packed in plastic bags inside a refrigerated room.
The captions of the grotesque images of the disfigured faces urged the mothers of these soldiers, if they recognized them, to come get them before they were buried in mass graves.
