Olha Povalyayeva said she fell “into a stupor” as she heard the first three explosions rock Kyiv in the morning.
“I couldn’t believe that it was really happening,” Povalyayeva, 30, said, speaking Russian on the phone.
About an hour later, she witnessed an explosion at a business center in central Kyiv, just a third of a mile away.
“I was terrified, I could not move,” the project manager said. “The shock wave was very strong. My legs buckled, my teeth started chattering from fear and nerves.”
As missiles pounded Kyiv, Alyona Shubina’s husband called to tell her the news and she rushed to pack bottles of water, snacks, blankets and a phone charger. “He took me near our home and we drove for our kids and then went down in the shelter,” Shubina, 33, said.
Her two sons were in school at the time of the attacks, but the couple drove to collect them.
Almost 30 people were sheltering in the underground car park of her apartment building, said Shubina, who works as a psychologist, but a good Wi-Fi connection was keeping her 6-year-old and 3-year-old children busy even while she despaired at the destruction outside.
“It is horrible,” she said in English via Instagram. “The future is falling apart again.”
Oct. 10, 202201:21
Serhii Akimov lives in a tall building in the capital and could see all the way to the city center as it was rocked by explosions.
The damage he saw shocked him, said Akimov, 41.
“I just stayed next to the window, frozen and didn’t know what to do next,” he said.
But after another explosion hit a business center just next to his home, he said he immediately went to a bomb shelter.
“It is difficult to express how I feel,” Akimov, who owns an interior design studio in the capital, said on the phone from Kyiv, speaking Russian.
“I am very angry with the Russians,” he said. “They are just killing ordinary Ukrainians. I am worried, can’t pull myself together, to be honest.” But, he said, “I keep my hope.”
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv, Yuliya Talmazan from London, and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.
Cal Perry and Lawahez Jabari contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
