The images of the shocked woman with a green stuffed animal and glittering Christmas decorations in her hand – in the middle of a pile of broken building remains, but a whole bathtub – show how hard and random a war hits. The 23-year-old woman has been identified as Anastasia Shvets. She had just had lunch with her parents, according to Shvets’ Instagram account. – I have no words. I have no feelings. I feel nothing beyond a great emptiness inside me, she writes in an update from the hospital according to the British newspaper The Telegraph. Most things in and around the apartment of Anastasia Shvet’s parents were broken. Photo: Arsen Dzodzaev / Hromadske The rocket that hit It was at 15:40 on Saturday 14 January that the Russian cruise missile hit the block of flats in Dnipro. Then came the explosions. The air was filled with dust, thick smoke, flames and desperate screams. Around 1,700 people lived in the block. Two of the stairwells in the nine-storey block were hit. 72 apartments are completely destroyed. Among them the apartment of the Shvets family. – I don’t know where my parents are, writes Shvets according to The Telegraph. – I remember my father’s stupid jokes, that we took pictures of the puppies together, mum. That we ate her noodles for lunch. On Monday morning, Ukrainian authorities confirmed that the parents had been found dead in the ruins. Anastasia Shvets herself had gone to sleep before a night shift she was due to do. It probably saved her life. To the Ukrainian television station TV Kyiv and the newspaper Ukraine’s new voice, she says that the first thing she heard was a violent bang. Next came the dust. – My room was gone, the same with the kitchen, the bathroom and the hallway. The only thing I could see was ruins, she says. Here, Anastasia Shvets is rescued from the apartment. Amazingly, she only suffered minor injuries to her head and legs. Photo: Arsen Dzodzaev / Hromadske Photographer Photographer Arsen Dzodzaiev from the Ukrainian news website Hromadske arrived at the block shortly after the rocket had hit. He describes the situation he encountered as terrifying. – I am not sure that you can handle atrocities like this, he says to news. He first spotted Anastasia on the ninth floor. He took a few pictures and moved on to take other pictures. When he returned, he witnessed her being evacuated from the bathtub. He thinks it is difficult to imagine what those who lost everything in the attack feel. – I cannot describe my own pain, he says. Shvets have already lost a lot in the war. According to the story she has posted on Instagram and which The Telegraph refers to, her boyfriend has fallen at the front. – I can’t get over the fact that it’s been two weeks since I last heard your voice and saw you smile. You told me how loved I was, but suddenly everything is over, all our dreams and all our goals, Shvets wrote some time ago. – I just want to be with my parents, she writes in her latest update. A rescue worker looks at parts of the collapsed block of flats in Dnipro which was hit by a cruise missile on Saturday 14 January. Photo: SERGEI CHUZAVKOV / AFP Hope is fading Two days after the incident, the search is still on for survivors. On Sunday afternoon, a scantily clad woman was found alive, 18 hours after the cruise missile hit the block. The temperature in the city is around zero degrees. 38 other residents were also found by the rescue crews. Some used lights from their mobile phones to signal for help. But the governor of Dnipropetrovsk, Valentyn Reznichenko, tells the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform on Monday afternoon that the hope of finding more people alive is now diminishing hour by hour. The death toll from the rocket attack has risen to 40, according to the latest update from the Ukrainian authorities. Among the dead are at least two children. 30 people have still not been accounted for. 75 are registered wounded, including 14 children. For some, the situation is critical. Oleksander Anyskevytj looks at the destruction of the block of flats in Dnipro. He Photo: AP Oleksander Anyskevytsj tells AP that he was in the apartment when the block was hit. – Boom – and that was it. We saw that we lived, and that’s all, says Anyskevytch. Anyskevytch says he knows several of those affected. – The little girl who was found alive in the ruins is a classmate of our son. But her parents are probably dead, he says. Neighbors and others came to light a candle or lay flowers in respect and compassion for those affected. Many brought food, clothes and toys with them which they gave to the organizations that will help those who were lucky and survived. – We could all have been there, says Iryna Skrypnyk to the news agency AP. Neighbors and residents of Dnipro lay flowers and stuffed animals in respect. Everyone felt that it might as well have been them who had been hit. Photo: CLODAGH KILCOYNE / Reuters War crimes The attack on Saturday is the worst to hit Ukraine’s fourth largest city. Dnipro is located southeast of Kyiv, in the center of the country. Before the war, around 1.4 million lived in the city, which is known for its metal industry and Soviet architecture. – Deliberate attacks against civilians are war crimes. Those responsible will be punished, says Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Sweden holds the presidency of the EU this six months, and the Swedish prime minister condemns the attack in the strongest terms together with EU president Charles Michel. – Russia continues to show its inhuman face and uses its missile terror completely indiscriminately, added EU spokesman Peter Stano from Brussels. In parts of the block of flats, the entire outer wall was torn off. Another part of the block was completely crushed. Photo: STRINGER / Reuters The Criminal Court against Putin At the same time, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock went to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to discuss a possible criminal prosecution of Vladimir Putin. Baerbock met the head of the court Piotr Hofmanski and chief prosecutor Karim Khan. Baerbock, like several Western leaders, believes that the Russian president must be held responsible for the invasion of the neighboring country and the enormous destruction and humanitarian consequences of the war. Residents of the block of flats, where the apartments were available, were able to pick up individual ownership shares on Sunday. Photo: SERGEI CHUZAVKOV / AFP Russia denies blame Russia denies that it was behind the attack on Saturday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov believes it was a Ukrainian rocket that hit the block. Photo: Pontus Höök / NTB Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in a statement that Russian forces did not attack civilian targets in Dnipro. Instead, Peskov claims that it was a Ukrainian air defense missile that landed in the block of flats. Ukraine states that it was a Kh-22 rocket that hit the block, and that this is a type of rocket that the Ukrainian air defenses cannot shoot down. The Kh-22 missile was developed in the 1960s, for use against aircraft carriers. It can also be equipped with a nuclear warhead. Within Nato, it is nicknamed “The Kitchen”. Follow the development in news’s News Center:
ttn-69
Anastasia (23) had to be rescued from the seventh floor – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
