At 5pm on 28 June, Lana Yefimova left work as usual, walking from her office in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Minutes later a Russian rocket hit the nine-storey apartment block opposite her workplace and crashed through the upper floors, ripping through ceilings. “I ran back to find a fire. It was huge. My colleague Yulia was hurt. She broke her pelvis. I was in shock,” Yefimova said.
Four people were killed inside the residential building at 24a Vikonkomivska Street and 12 injured, including a pregnant woman and a baby. The attack was seemingly random – another erratic death-bringing moment in Russia’s bloody war. “They want to frighten us so we leave,” Yefimova said. “It’s politics. And terror.”
When rescue workers eventually extinguished the blaze left by the attack it revealed a gaping and jagged V-shape where people had lived. “We were somehow lucky. There should have been dozens of victims,” said Dnipro’s mayor, Borys Filatov. “The Russians shoot without any purpose. For them, everything is a target.”
Kyiv hopes the arrival of F-16 fighter jets – announced by Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday – will enable it to better protect itself from Russian bombardment.
Ukraine’s major urban areas have been bombed by the Kremlin since the beginning of its February 2022 full-scale invasion and Dnipro, an industrial centre of 1 million people, was a regular target, the mayor said. The city is located in the middle of the country and was home to military hospitals and rocket factories. “We are a hub. They are interested in punishing us.”
Last month, another five people died in a strike on a shopping centre. The highest death toll came in January 2023 when a Kh-22 missile hit a residential block in Dnipro, killing 46 people. Cuddly toys are piled up at a nearby bus stop, in memory of the six children who were among the dead. The Russians had been aiming at Dnipro’s thermal power plant, Filatov said.
He decried Russia’s aerial attacks. “The Kh-22 is a Soviet-designed anti-ship missile. It was made to sink aircraft carriers. To use this kind of rocket in a crowded place full of civilians is a war crime,” he said.
According to Filatov, the Kremlin was constantly refining its bombing techniques. Its latest ploy was to send waves of unmanned drones and rockets with the intention of overwhelming Ukraine’s air defences. Previously they flew at about 3km (1.8 miles) in altitude but now it was 50 metres, causing destruction even if intercepted, he said. “They improve. We improve. They change routes. We find them. It’s a competition.”
The consequences of Russia’s aerial raids have been stark. Nationwide attacks on power stations have taken a toll. Last week, shops, businesses and restaurants in Dnipro hummed with the sound of generators as a summer heatwave pushed temperatures to 38C (100.3F). “No power means no water. We are trying to find alternatives such as gas. Let’s hope God sends us a warm winter and our air defences hold up,” Filatov said.
He repeated an appeal made by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for international allies to provide Ukraine with more air defences. While Nato allies meeting in Washington in July promised five additional Patriot systems, it was shortfalls that led to the recent deadly hits on Kyiv, Dnipro and other places, the mayor said. “We have air defences here. I can’t tell you what they are. But we need more,” he stressed.
Russia had also changed its ground tactics, Filatov said. Troops were being sent forward in groups of eight to 10 into no man’s land and instead of using armoured vehicles vulnerable to drones, they rode on motorbikes and buggies. Sometimes they were unarmed and told to reach a position and to wait for reinforcements. These methods were developed by the Wagner mercenary group, he said.
Most of these Russian soldiers perish. “Nobody could have thought that in the 21st century, Russia would have this relationship with human life,” Filatov said. “We had the illusion at the start of the invasion we would kill 100,000 Russians and the war would end. We killed more than that and it’s still going.” He showed off a photo of a giant rat that, he said, fed on dead Russians.
Ukraine was not only struggling for its survival but was also fighting for democracy and universal values, he added. Allies, he said, had consistently misread Vladimir Putin, who at the 2007 Munich security conference famously attacked US “hegemony” and said he wanted a new “multipolar” world order. “Putin isn’t mad. He has been absolutely rational. The west closed its eyes and pretended everything was the same.”
He said that if Putin was not stopped he would attack Moldova or the Baltic states next. “We have to keep fighting. We don’t have a choice.”
Last week the bombed apartment block on Vikonkomivska Street was eerily empty; survivors had moved out of their ruined homes. Two policemen, Roman and Vlad, stood guard in a rubble-strewn yard. They showed off video footage taken from inside the building. There was a dust-covered living room and balloons celebrating a child’s fourth birthday. “The flat has no roof,” Roman said. What did he think of Russia? “Terrible.”
Yefimova, the office worker, said conditions in Dnipro were not great. “It’s hot. There’s no power or water. And people are very tired. Everyone hopes that the fighting will finish soon. Then we can rebuild,” she said. Russia’s military attack against Ukraine made no sense, she added. “It’s very unjust. We are normal people. We didn’t do anything.”
