“Mio figlio stava salutando e mi ha detto che mi ama molto”-Momenti di orrore mentre una famiglia aspettava di essere salvata da un grattacielo in fiamme, solo per sentire i soccorritori che la gru non poteva raggiungerli.

Oksana Siurkha hadn’t lived long in the nine-story building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, where a missile struck on the morning of June 17. She, her husband Serhii, and their 14-year-old daughter rented an apartment on the eighth floor. When the missile hit, the family was sheltering in a corner of their apartment behind two thick walls. When they tried to get out, they realized there was nowhere to go: their apartment and the stairwell had collapsed all the way to the ground floor. 

“After the explosion, when we were still upstairs and calling every emergency service we could, we shouted to our neighbors to call for help together,” Oksana says. “So that people would know – there are still survivors here. But no one responded. There was silence.”

The air raid alert in Kyiv began at 21:06  (9:06 pm) on June 16 and lasted nearly nine hours. Russia launched 175 drones and over 14 cruise missiles on Kyiv.

“There were about 10–12 explosions – we stopped counting,” Oksana recalls. “When it seemed over, we went back to the apartment. Then we saw more missiles incoming – ballistics this time. We went back down, waited, and came up again. But then more Shaheds came. We hid in the corner again behind two thick walls and started gathering our things to go back to the shelter—and then we heard the whistle of the missile. Everything was blown away. A flash, fire, glass shattering, the smell of dust and concrete. We ran, just in our clothes. And then the second missile hit. We opened the door – and there was nowhere to run.”

“When the rescuers said their crane couldn’t reach us, my daughter began to say goodbye,” Oksana says. “She told me, ‘Mom, remember that I love you very, very much.’ Everything around us was burning, the roofing was exploding, and we were sitting on the eighth floor with no way out. Either we’d fall, burn, or be rescued.”

“Can people really do something like this?” cries Vika. She and her husband live in the neighboring building, which was damaged by the blast wave. She’s holding work gloves and respirators, waiting for the police to let her into her apartment to assess the damage. She doesn’t know what to expect—only that the windows are blown out.

The building has a gaping hole through it. On the other side, pieces of people’s homes are scattered all the way to the shattered tram tracks.

The Siurkha family still doesn’t know what happened to their cat. After the explosion, it hid in the bathroom.

“I can’t describe what I felt in that moment. But I couldn’t look for the cat – I had to help my daughter,” Oksana says. “I’ll be happy if we find him alive. And if not—then he’s our guardian angel now.”

[https://suspilne.media/1044793-mam-pamataj-so-a-tebe-duze-silno-lublu-reportaz-z-pid-kiivskogo-budinku-de-raketa-znisila-cilij-pidizd/](https://suspilne.media/1044793-mam-pamataj-so-a-tebe-duze-silno-lublu-reportaz-z-pid-kiivskogo-budinku-de-raketa-znisila-cilij-pidizd/)

I know Ukraine needs to take the high road… but fuck its hard advocating the high road seeing shit like this. Killing conscripts seems to be so hollow since they’re the dregs of Russian society.

Moscow needs to burn. I said it. Fuck them.