Rescuers pull survivors from Ukraine residential building destroyed by Russian strike
- Residents tell of miraculous escapes as death toll from strike on building in city of Chasiv Yar rises to 31
- Russian forces have launched a wave of bombardments in the east to consolidate control over Donbas region
Rescuers pulled survivors on Monday from a residential block destroyed by a Russian missile strike that killed 31 people in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said while lamenting Moscow’s firepower advantage despite billions in Western aid.
The civilian deaths hammered home the human cost of Russia’s invasion, now in its fifth month, as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces push to capture all of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region after declaring victory in one of its two provinces this month.
In the city of Chasiv Yar, rescuers made voice contact with two people in the wreckage of the five-storey building demolished on Saturday. Video showed them pulling survivors from the debris, where up to two dozen people had been trapped.
But the death toll also rose steadily, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said, as more bodies were pulled from under ruined concrete. In a nightly address, Zelensky said 31 people had been killed and nine saved from the rubble.
One survivor, who gave her name as Venera, said she had wanted to save her two kittens.
“I was thrown into the bathroom, it was all chaos, I was in shock, all covered in blood,” she said, crying. “By the time I left the bathroom, the room was full up of rubble, three floors fell down.