Kyiv, June 20: Emergency workers pulled more bodies Wednesday from the rubble of a nine-story Kyiv apartment building demolished by a Russian missile, raising the death toll from the latest attack on the Ukrainian capital to 28.The building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district took a direct hit and collapsed during the deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv this year. Authorities said that 23 of those killed were inside the building. The remaining five died elsewhere in the city.
Workers used cranes, excavators and their hands to clear more debris from the site, while sniffer dogs searched for buried victims. The blast blew out windows and doors in neighbouring buildings in a wide radius of damage.
The attack overnight on Monday into Tuesday was part of a sweeping barrage as Russia once again sought to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences. Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles in what Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was one of the biggest bombardments of the war, now in its fourth year.
Russia has launched a summer offensive on parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line and has intensified long-range attacks that have struck urban residential areas.
At the same time, U.S.-led peace efforts have failed to gain traction. Also, Middle East tensions and US trade tariffs have drawn world attention away from Ukraine’s pleas for more diplomatic and economic pressure to be placed on Russia.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said the attack clashed with the attempts by the administration of President Donald Trump to reach a settlement that will stop the fighting.
“This senseless attack runs counter to President Trump’s call to stop the killing and end the war,” the embassy posted on social platform X.
Kyiv authorities declared Wednesday an official day of mourning. Mourners laid flowers on swings and slides at a playground across the street from the collapsed building. On Tuesday, a man had waited hours there for his 31-year-old son’s body to be pulled from the rubble.
Psychologists from Ukraine’s emergency services provided counselling to survivors of the attack and to family members of those who died.
“Some people are simply in a stupor, they simply can’t move,” Karyna Dovhal, one of the psychologists, told AP. “People are waiting for their sons, brothers, uncles … Everyone is waiting.”
Valentin Hrynkov, a 64-year-old handyman in a local school who lived on the seventh floor of a connected building that did not collapse, said he and his wife woke up to the sound of explosions followed by a pause, and then another blast that rattled their own building.
He said his wife had shrapnel injuries in her back, and his legs and feet were cut by broken glass. The damage trapped them in their apartment for around 30 minutes before rescue workers could free them, he said.
He felt an overwhelming sense of “helplessness and primal fear” during the attack, he told The Associated Press.
“I was especially scared to sleep last night,” Hrynkov said. “A car drives by and I cover my head. It’s scary.”
By dawn on Tuesday, residents of buildings in the densely populated neighbourhood could be seen huddled in ground-floor entryways to seek shelter from the ongoing drone assault.
Drones were striking every few minutes within hundreds of meters of the building hit by the missile. The continuing attack forced firefighters and rescue teams to delay the rescue operation.
Relatives and friends of the destroyed building’s residents later gathered outside in shock, many crying and calling out names, hoping survivors might still be found beneath the rubble.