Smoke poured from the roof of a six-story hotel in central Kyiv on Thursday morning. Two ladder trucks sprayed jets of water that sent debris tumbling to the sidewalk below, where dozens of firefighters were gathered.
They trudged in and out of the stately building in central Kyiv’s Shevchenko district, their faces sooty and red. Some sat down along a fence, chugging water in the summer heat and staring up at the burning building in front of them.
It was one of many blazes in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Thursday as Russia launched one of its deadliest barrages in recent weeks. At least 18 people were killed, dozens were injured, and tens of thousands sought shelter in subway stations while air-raid sirens blared and explosions filled the skies.
“It was terrifying,” said Kateryna, 77, who had been at the entrance of her building when explosions hit that morning. “There was a huge blast, people screamed, and the whole room shook.”
The latest deadly night in Ukraine, more than four years into the war with Russia, showed how the toll for civilians continues to mount amid slow, grinding fighting on the battlefield. As Ukrainian forces have struck deeper inside Russia in recent weeks, causing casualties and supply challenges for President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces, Moscow has struck back with waves of assaults on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
In May, the United Nations reported that at least 274 civilians had been killed and more than 1,700 injured, the highest combined total in a month since April 2022, soon after the Russian invasion began.
By noon on Thursday, hours after the Russian assault started. not all the fires had been put out. And rescue teams worked into the afternoon searching the rubble for survivors and victims, including in the Darntysia district, where a nine-story apartment building had partially collapsed from a strike.
Affixed to harnesses, the rescue workers gingerly explored what remained of the building’s upper levels while excavators moved buckets of concrete and debris on the ground below. The workers didn’t pause even when new air-raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming Russian drones.
Nearby, residents swept up glass around other damaged buildings and boarded up blown-out windows and doors with planks of wood.
Some people were still shaken from the overnight assault. Kateryna, the 77-year-old, shuffled down a sidewalk, glass crunching underfoot. She had moved to Kyiv from Cherkasy, in central Ukraine, just weeks ago to be closer to her children and grandchildren, she said, declining to give her full name because she did not want people in her hometown to know she had been affected. After these strikes, she said, it was clear that moving had been a mistake.
“It’s heartbreaking to think about it now,” she said, starting to cry.
In other parts of the city, some fires were still burning well into the afternoon. Black smoke climbed above northern Kyiv, where a helicopter drew water from a lake to help extinguish a blaze.
A short distance away, a grating symphony of shovels scraped at the pavement, as teachers helped clean up a damaged kindergarten. The white building, painted with cheery forest animals, had its windows and doors blown out.
One volunteer, Oleksandra Perekhodko, 36, wiped her eyes as she explained that normally schoolchildren would have filled the building on a Thursday morning. Around the corner, a giant crater had appeared in front of a five-story apartment building, whose mangled staircases were visible through bombed-out windows. People stopped to stare and take photographs while residents tried to salvage what they could.
Investigators at the scene had collected pieces of shrapnel and laid them out on a table set up in another playground strewed with debris. They wiped down the hunks of metal, examining them for clues to what weapons had been used in the strike.
Olena Rudenkova, a Kyiv resident who had heard the explosions clearly from her home, said that Ukrainians have learned to live with fear after years of war. Some may shed tears, she said, but everyone has grown hardened, even children.
“Everyone becomes as focused and angry as possible,” she said.
Liubov Sholudko and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.
