Dmytro ran to the room where two of his children were sleeping after a Russian missile hit his apartment building in Uman, Ukraine, before dawn on Friday.
He opened the door and looked shocked.
“There was no room behind the door. Just a shower of fire and smoke,” she said. At the end of the day, he and his wife, Inna, found no trace of 17-year-old Kyrylo or 11-year-old Sophia.
Russia launched its first widespread airstrike in more than a month on Friday against Ukrainian civilian targets, killing at least 25 people, officials said — the deadliest attack since January.
At least 20 were killed in that Uman apartment block, the front facade of which was blown away by the missile blast.
The attack marked the return of a pattern Russia adopted last year after its invasion failed to defeat Ukraine militarily, of raining long-range missiles, rockets and drones on cities and towns far from battlefields in the east and south.
It is a strategy that aims to partially destroy civilian infrastructure, and also aims to terrorize and demoralize the population, with deadly reminders that nowhere in the country is beyond Russia’s reach.
On Friday, Russian bomber planes flying over the Caspian Sea fired 23 cruise missiles that fell after 4 am, Ukrainian forces shot down 21 of them, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander of the Ukrainian military forces, said in a statement. .
The Kremlin’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that it had used “high-precision, long-range missiles” against places where Ukrainian reservists were gathering, without specifying the locations or offering evidence of what was destroyed.
“The objective of the attack was achieved,” he adds.
The attack highlights the importance of Ukraine’s air defenses, which have been highly effective but not perfect.
Even a small number of missiles penetrating them can do great damage.
US intelligence agencies speculated that without a major influx of Western munitions, Ukraine’s air defense, which is weakened by repeated Russian strikes, could fracture.
