It flew like a kite propelled by a stern wind. Harmless enough to the unschooled eye. Swooping, a small triangle in the sky. Then there was the noise. Similar to a moped at first but ever more like the full-throated roar of a motorbike as the kamikaze drone swept closer into view.
It was one of an estimated 28 launched on Monday morning at targets around Kyiv’s central railway station and elsewhere in Ukraine’s capital; some people had fled at the sight of it, scattering to find cover, as the dark grey triangle swept above the high-rise apartments in the cloudless pale blue sky.
Others stood, staring upwards. Fixed to the spot even as the menacing outline of the Iranian-made Shahed-136, not dissimilar to a fighter jet in miniature, became ever more apparent.
A certain sense of fatalism took over as the drone hovered directly above, turning this way and that. A surreal yet bewitching calm. Then grim-faced soldiers and armed police broke the spell as they vainly fired their AK-47s in its direction, rat-a-tat-tat, as did the slightly heavier-sounding air defence systems. To some, the burst of fire was what first made them aware of the mortal danger.
The question on everyone’s mind was which way would it turn now. Where was it heading? Then the drone fixed on its target. Where was it pointing? It turned in the air, a wing tilted to the right – and it dived. Faster now, not a kite but a swallow. Five seconds, no more, and the boom of an explosion, a burst of flames, screams from those closer to its final destination. Dark grey smoke billowed from the unfortunate spot. Relief for some meant horror for others.
It was the fifth successful attack of the morning on Ukraine’s capital on Monday, timed at 8.21am.
The first had struck a building closer to Kyiv central station, barely 200 metres from its grand front entrance at 6.37am, as the pink of the dawn sun emerged above the city’s horizon, lighting up an apartment block in flames.
Then another tell-tale burst of machine gun fire was again followed by the cruel crack of an explosion at 6.45am. And a further heart-leaping boom at 6.59am. Huge bellowing fires erupted off the streets of Kyiv. And a further strike at 7.30am. To those around the station, it seemed constant. The minutes between blasts vanished.
Those making their way through the station ran to the underpasses between the platforms. Down there, parents tried to distract toddlers with anything they had to hand: a toy car, a pebble. Look at this, don’t think of anything else. Couples hugged. Prayers were said. An old woman, helped to sit down on the concrete stairs, shook uncontrollably. Outside, there was panic. Men hurdled pavement railings, women grabbed children and bags, caustic smoke filled the air. At one site, witnesses said they heard cries for help.
A 59-year-old woman, named locally as Tatiana, and a young couple, Bohdan and Victoria, 34, who had been six months pregnant with their first child, were killed when the storeys in their apartment block collapsed into each other. A fourth person, a man, was also said to have died in the flats. Three people were hospitalised, two of whom were said to be rescue workers.
Halyna Stefanova, who lived with her 65-year-old mother two floors down from the deceased young couple, told of how the walls around their own apartment fell apart.
“My bedroom window blew out, the kitchen window blew out and the walls collapsed”, said Stefanova, a retired psychologist. “The smoke was so strong and thick that we could not see anything for five minutes and we were completely disoriented. It was like a heavy fog; me and mum started suffocating in this smoke.”
Stefanova and her mother managed to escape through an emergency exit after finding the front door blocked by debris. “When I passed the rescuers, I saw and was told that the rescuers had already retrieved the body of our 59-year-old neighbour from the fourth floor”, she said. “The body was already packed in a black plastic bag.”
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, told a huddle of media outside the devastated apartments that the death toll could have been far higher. “Five explosions took place in the city of Kyiv,” he said. “The rest of the drones were shot down by our military.”
The mayor said electricity substations appeared to have been the targets but that civilians had been the victims.
“Russians want to leave the city of Kyiv without heat, without heating. Without electricity,” he said. “They want to create a humanitarian disaster in Kyiv.”
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser at Ukraine’s ministry for internal affairs, and ally of the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, posed with armed police officers and a smashed drone casing that he said had been downed that morning.
“Now you can see how we can shoot down the Shahed drones,” he said on a video posted on Telegram. “If you hear a noise of the drones and you have your own weapon, even a hunting rifle, you can and must shoot.”
The words were likely to offer precious little comfort to many. The strikes, the second mass attack by drones in the past fortnight on Kyiv, had been emulated on a smaller scale across Ukraine. There were three fatalities in Sumy, a region in the east of the country. Russia’s defence ministry said it had carried out a “massive” attack on military targets and energy infrastructure using high-precision weapons.
To some, the use of drones rather than cruise missiles in the latest attacks will offer hope that Russia is running out of its most powerful weapons. Zelenskiy, in a message on social media, spoke simply of his sorrow at the latest cruel loss of life. “The whole night, and the whole morning, the enemy terrorises the civilian population,” he wrote. “The enemy can attack our cities, but it won’t be able to break us.”
