"The building shook twice": eyewitness of Uman tragedy describes Russian missile attack

Zhanna Klymenko is a resident of the neighbourhood of nine-storey buildings in Uman that was hit by a Russian missile on 28 April. Her apartment block was shaken twice as the missile hit the back and side of the building. All the apartments in her section of the building had their windows blown out.

Zhanna talked to Ukrainska Pravda.Life about the morning of the tragedy which claimed the lives of 23 people, including five children.

"We slept soundly, no one was expecting anything. There was an air-raid alarm we didn't hear. And let's be honest: we’ve got used to air-raid alarms.

At 4 am, my sister, who lives nearby, called me. She said a missile had just hit the area and that I needed to wake up and go to a safe place," says Zhanna.

In her words, she didn’t have time to wake up – the next moment she felt a strong explosion. It was the aftermath of the missile hitting the nine-storey building: "it shook so intensely that it was really scary," Zhanna recalls.

Realising that the danger was very close, she asked her husband to quickly collect their documents. But no sooner had the couple got out of bed than a second, more powerful explosion followed.

"I ran out of the house in my pyjamas and my husband was in his dressing gown. As we went down the stairs from the fourth floor, we could see that there were no windows in our section. It wasn’t yet clear what had hit [the building] and where," says Zhanna.

Immediately after that, Zhanna called her sister, and the two families went to their parents' place out of town.

Once in a safer place, the women and their husbands started looking at the photos that eyewitnesses had taken at the scene of the tragedy and posted on social media.

"It became clear that the missile landed behind our building. And in front of our building, there was a direct hit on another nine-storey building where my aunt lives. So that struck the back and side of our building," she continues.

Zhanna’s husband, her father and her sister's husband then returned to the scene of the tragedy to look for her aunt and her husband under the rubble. Rescue workers allowed them to join the search group. Zhanna arrived too, after the all-clear was given.

"What I saw could not be imagined even in your worst nightmare. Half of the building had just gone, there were people lying in body bags by the side of the road. [It all happened] because the whole section collapsed like a house of cards.

I saw my aunt's husband in the crowd. I ran over to him: he was in a state of shock, he’d been rescued from under the rubble. My uncle was going to work that morning: he’d left the bedroom and gone to the kitchen, the only room that was left intact. That’s where he was when the missile hit," Zhanna says with a lump in her throat. 

She said her uncle had refused medical care and had gone to look for his wife.

"All the windows in the whole neighbourhood were blown out, the cars in the yard are all smashed up, people are looking for their friends under the rubble," she adds.

Now Zhanna’s uncle needs help, because he has nothing left. The place where his apartment used to be now lies in ruins. Anyone who would like to help can do so by following this link.

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