After a night of terror in Kyiv, the search for the dead continues

Evchen Povarenkov stood on a line from a police lane that separated the public from the intensive operation to search and rescue around his building.

He stared at the rest of his apartment, in the suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. His windows were gone, his balcony was on the verge of a collapse.

Below, personal belongings were strewn on the paths. A bedroom and towels hung from the branches of the trees.

The cruise rocket struck in this ordinary apartment block in the Solomian neighborhood in the early hours of Tuesday morning, probably traveling at about 500 km / h. The blast destroyed 35 apartments and carved a whole part of the building.

By Wednesday afternoon, 23 people were found dead in the ruins. In Ukraine, it is known that at least 30 were killed in the attacks, all but two of them in Kiev.

The air strike on the Povarenov building was just one of the huge wave sent by Russia – a total of over 440 drones and 32 rockets, the Air Force said to Ukraine.

The barrage breaks the capital for nine hours, from midnight to a long past dawn. It was one of the worst attacks against Kyiv since the start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Povarenkov, a 43-year-old warehouse worker, looked at his destroyed apartment. His face was cut off and guarded everywhere, and one of his eyes was very bloody. He couldn’t see from him.

He was in bed when the rocket struck, he said. His elderly mother fell asleep in the next room.

“There was warmth, fire and smoke,” he said, recalling the huge impact just meters from his wall. “I lost consciousness. When I came, I heard my mother scream.”

Neighbors helped Poviricenkov kill his twisted door and take his mother to the apartment. Other survivors appeared in the remains of the broken building.

“People were screaming, the kids were crying,” said retirement Arkadi Volenchuk, 60. “It was a total chaos.”

Outside, residents tried to find a safe route through burning cars and falling debris.

“Everything was set on fire,” said the 69 -year -old Alla, a teacher. “The fuel tanks in the cars erupted. Broken glass was poured on top, along with pieces of concrete and tiles.”

Povarenkov’s mother was hasty of intensive treatment, he said, with two broken clavs, cuts out both her eyes and severe damage to her internal organs requiring surgery.

She was one of more than 100 injured in the city. Around midnight, Sergi Dubrov, an anesthesiologist and director of the 12th Clinical Hospital in Kiev, he felt that the strikes were beginning.

Within hours, only his hospital will receive 27 patients, he said.

“They had soft tissue injuries, broken glass, damage to the blood vessels. There were traumatic brain injuries and internal breast injuries. A man had a cut femur – we were able to repair it. The richest was a woman with damage to the head.

“These are the types of injuries we see from these types of attacks.”

Patients at the hospital of Dr. Dubrov varied from 18 to 95, he said. Three were their 90s. Strikes like those in residential buildings can be especially dangerous for the elderly and weak, who cannot easily focus on underground shelter.

Alexander Bondarchuk, a 64-year-old man with disabilities whose apartment was also close to the point of stroke, could not reach the shelter. He was lying in bed, terrified everywhere, he said.

An hour after the attack, Bondarchuk managed to slowly make his way down. “It was awful,” he said. “Everything was destroyed.”

Some of those whose apartments were badly damaged have been able to find refuge with friends or relatives. Others were not so lucky. “That’s all I have,” Bondarchuk said.

The strikes hit Ukraine as President Volodimir Zelenski traveled to the G7 conference in Canada to meet with world leaders. Some of Ukraine suspect that the weather was deliberate – a brutal message from Russia.

The scale of the attack emphasized Ukraine’s desperate need for international support, including enhanced air protection. But in the end, this will be an unsuccessful day for Zelenski.

His very expected bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump has evaporated when strikes are happening when Trump has announced that he will leave the conference early on the background of the Middle East crisis.

Since Trump is not present, a meeting of European leaders in Ukraine has failed to present a joint statement to support the country-statement, for which he was very charged with the Ukrainian country.

While Zelenski was traveling home from Canada on Wednesday, the people of the Solomian neighborhood in the southwestern Kiev gathered to put flowers in place of the rocket attack with a cruise.

Police would not allow Evchen Povarenkov to pass the line of the tape to extract his possessions of his and his mother from their broken apartment, so he just stood and stared. One hundred feet, emergency workers had just found two more bodies in the ruins.

They didn’t know how much more they would find, they said.

Anastasia Levchenko contributed to this report. Photos by Joel Gunter.