BRINK OF DEATH
Terrified woman seen clinging on for dear life in crumbling apartment block after Russian missile strike ‘kills 60’
ORDINARY family life was taking place when a Russian missile hit a block of flats in eastern Ukraine killing at least 35, injuring dozens and leaving 35 missing but presumed dead.
As the Russian strike hit her apartment building in Dnipro on Saturday night, Anastasia Shvets' life fell apart all around her.
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The striking images show the young woman sitting upright and clasping her phone, surrounded by the broken shards of her home.
Suddenly exposed to the winter night air Anastasia looks traumatised as she sits suspended on what was the seventh-floor of a packed apartment block.
The 23-year-old wrote on Instagram after the attack: “I was covered by the door in bed, part of the kitchen was in the bedroom. In fact the bathroom, kitchen, corridor and pantry are no longer there.”
Her parents in the next room were killed in the strike.
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"I have no words, I have no emotions, I feel nothing but a great emptiness inside," she wrote.
"I remember my father's stupid jokes today, how we took pictures of puppies with my mother today, ate my mother's Udon," she said of the fateful night.
Pictures showed Anastasia, who lost her husband fighting in the war a few months before, clinging to a green teddy bear as she is rescued from the scene.
A well-known Ukrainian boxing coach and father of two, Mikhailo Korenovsky, was also killed in the blast.
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A picture shows the carnage of the yellow-coloured kitchen after Putin's strike - where a birthday party had recently been held.
His wife Olga, 38, a personal trainer survived the blast as did his two daughters who were not inside at the time.
In the aftermath of the strike, the bereft woman posted: "Instead of this hole, this is where my apartment used to be, in which I lived with my family for nine years."
On Sunday, that there is a "minimal" chance of finding other survivors.
Over the weekend Russia launched a fresh wave of missile and rocket attacks aimed at energy and military infrastructure across Dnipro, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa.
However, they amounted to unimaginable civilians casualties, the likes of which have not been seen for months.
The current death toll in Dnipro is expected to climb even higher as more bodies are found within the ruins.
Teams of emergency responders have frantically been tearing at the remains of the 72 collapsed apartments in an attempt to rescue trapped survivors, whose screams have been heard.
So far, around 39 people have been rescued from the smouldering rubble, including children.
A 15-year-old was among those killed and two children were orphaned as Putin’s latest long-reach attack 300 miles southeast of Kyiv.
Local emergency services reports two rooms on the second floor had remained bizarrely intact but buried.
One woman was miraculously pulled from the rubble on Sunday, however her husband and child were found dead nearby.
With no clear military target nearby and far from the frontline, the attack has provoked outrage and international condemnation.
Mykola Lukashuk, head of Dnipro regional council responded to the attack with the statement: “Burn in hell, Russian murderers.”
This latest wave of missile attacks is part of Putin’s "energy war" against Ukraine, which is seen as an explicit attempt to break the Ukrainian spirit in the freezing winter months.
Zelensky has reported significant damage and blackouts, particularly in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.
Unfazed by the death at the hands of his missiles, Putin responded that everything was going to plan.
"Everything is developing within the framework of the plan of the ministry of defence and the general staff," he claimed.
Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov said Russian forces “do not strike residential buildings or social infrastructure, they strike military targets”
In response, Ukrainian President Zelensky launched an impassioned appeal for more weaponry from Western nations.
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Rishi Sunak has promised to send 14 Challenger II battle tanks, while NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also promised more heavy weaponry on Sunday.
The Kremlin claims that an increase in Western supplies of weaponry to Ukraine will only help to escalate the war and lead to more civilian casualties.
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