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

Evhen Povarenkov was held on a line of police strip that separated the public from the intensive research and rescue operation around his building.

He looked at what remained of his apartment, in a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. His windows had disappeared, his balcony was about to collapse.

Below, the personal effects were scattered on the trails. Sheets and towels hung on the branches of the trees.

A cruise missile struck this ordinary residential block in the Solomianskyi district in the early hours of Tuesday morning, probably traveling at around 500 MPH. The explosion destroyed 35 apartments and dug an entire section of the building.

Wednesday afternoon, 23 people were found dead in the rubble. Throughout Ukraine, at least 30 were known to have been killed during attacks, all except two in kyiv.

The air strike on the Povarenkov building was only one of a huge wave sent by Russia – a total of more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, said the Ukraine Air Force.

The dam broke the capital for nine hours, midnight to good after dawn. It was among the worst attacks on Kyiv since the start of the large -scale invasion of Ukraine.

Povarenkov, an employee of the 43 -year -old warehouse, looked down at his destroyed apartment. His face was cut and collapsed everywhere and one of his eyes was seriously injected with blood. He couldn’t see them.

He was in bed when the missile struck, he said. His elderly mother slept in the neighboring room.

“There was heat, fire and smoke,” he said, recalling the huge impact a few meters from his wall. “I lost consciousness. When I arrived, I heard my mother screaming.”

The neighbors helped Povarenkov to knock out his distorted door and get his mother from the apartment. Other survivors emerged in the remains of the broken building.

“People were shouting, the children were crying,” said Retired Arcadiy Vorenchuk, 60. “It was total chaos.”

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

“Everything was on fire,” said Alla, 69, a teacher. “The cars’ fuel tanks exploded. The broken glass flowed from above, as well as pieces of concrete and tiles.”

Povarenkov’s mother was precipitated towards intensive care, he said, with two broken clavicles, cuts to both eyes and serious damage to her internal organs which required surgery.

She was one of the more than 100 injured in the city. Around midnight, Serhii Dubrov, anesthesiologist and director of the 12th Kyiv City Clinical Hospital, estimated that strikes begin.

In a few hours, his hospital alone would receive 27 patients, he said.

“They suffered injuries with soft tissue, broken glass lacerations, damage to blood vessels. There were traumatic brain lesions and internal thoracic lesions. One had a cut femoral artery – we were able to repair it. The worst was a woman suffering from head trauma.

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

Dr. Dubrov hospital patients varied from 18 to 95 years old, he said. Three were in the 90s. Strikes like these, in residential buildings, can be particularly dangerous for the elderly and infirm, which cannot easily rush to an underground refuge.

Oleksandr Bondarchuk, a 64 -year -old disabled man whose apartment was also close to the impact point, could not go to the refuge. He is lying in a terrified bed all along, he said.

An hour after the attack, Bondarchuk managed to lower slowly. “It was terrible,” he said. “Everything was destroyed.”

Some of those whose apartments were seriously damaged were able to find a shelter with friends or parents. Others have not been lucky. “That’s all I have,” said Bondarchuk.

The strikes have reached Ukraine as president, Volodymyr Zelensky, went to the G7 conference in Canada to meet world leaders. Some in Ukraine suspect that the timing was intentional – a brutal message from Russia.

The extent of the attack highlighted the desperate need of Ukraine in international support, including an increase in air defenses. But in the end, it would be an unsuccessful day for Zelensky.

His long-awaited bilateral meeting with American President Donald Trump evaporated while strikes occurred, when Trump announced that he would leave the conference early in the middle of the crisis in the Middle East.

With Trump not present, a meeting of European leaders on Ukraine failed to produce a joint support of support for the country – a declaration which was very abundant on the Ukrainian side.

On Wednesday, when Zelensky returned home from Canada, people from the Solomianskyi district, in the southwest of Kyiv, gathered to lay flowers on the site of the cruise missile attack.

The police would not let Evhen Povarenkov pass the line of adhesive tape to recover his property and his mother from their broken apartment, so he got up and looked. A hundred meters away, the emergencies had just found two other bodies in the rubble.

They did not know how much more they would find, they said.

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