A bustling neighborhood in the center of Kyiv lies devastated after a pre-dawn ballistic missile attack, leaving at least three dead on the scene.
A security guard at a local eatery and two others incinerated in a minibus they were travelling in were killed immediately.
A huge gaping crater gouged out of the middle of the road marks the spot where the missile hit.
An office tower stands in shambles across from a Metro station that has lost one of its walls. The building housing a McDonald’s next store has had its front crushed in from the blast.
Glass shards cover the pavement in between, and the smell of burnt munitions stings the lungs.
Even a row of shops behind the Metro station – its escalators still operating as if oblivious to the surrounding destruction – have been gutted from the inside out.
Kolya, who is wearing the uniform of a security guard is already sweeping up the debris from the shop he works in with some of the other employees.
He said he was on duty when the missile struck, just 30 metres away but was not particularly shaken.
“I am used to it by now.”
Indeed, this attack marks the fifth on this neighborhood that I have personally covered since Russia’s all out invasion of Ukraine began three years ago next month.
One local resident said it was the eighth such attack according to his count.
The night had begun as so many others of late – an air raid siren in the late evening followed by reports on social media of approaching drones. Things even got loud as the night wore on, as anti-aircraft guns worked to shoot them down.
Then, nearer to dawn but while still completely dark, things went quiet and the Telegram channels announced the alert had been cancelled.
After just a few minutes and an indescribably eerie silence, a thundering boom shook the skies over my flat around 20 minutes walk away.
A elderly woman on the scene who only identified herself as Alla said she had just got up to make herself a coffee after the alert had been cancelled when the missile struck.
“I could not move,” she said of the shock.
One man on the scene described witnessing the missiles impact from his bed.
He said, “The window of my flat flew open and I saw a huge flash of light.” Luckily neither he nor his flat was hurt.
Immediately after the strike, video on social media showed cars ablaze or bobbing in a flood of water from a broken water main as a result of the blast.
Scores of police soon cordoned off the usually highly congested area, which includes an outdoor market and shopping center.
Fire trucks and ambulances crowded the road as emergency workers removed rubble and shop workers swept away pieces of their store fronts.
The holiday season, which runs later in this part of the world, is just wrapping up, but this missile attack mark the second on the Ukrainian this month and the third since the Christmas season began.
