{"id":377592,"date":"2025-08-27T12:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/377592\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T12:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:25:15","slug":"after-one-of-russias-deadliest-attacks-kyiv-residents-lose-hope-for-help-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/377592\/","title":{"rendered":"After one of Russia\u2019s deadliest attacks, Kyiv residents lose hope for help | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> Several framed photos on the yellow ground drown amid bouquets of wilting flowers under a wind-shaken strip of red tape.<\/p>\n

Above them are towering rectangles of damaged concrete \u2013 remnants of a blast-gutted apartment building.<\/p>\n

Sasha Paremsky, 11, stood in front of the scene, quietly describing a boy in one of the photos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scariest thing is to see my friend\u2019s photo there. We\u2019d just met to play football before \u2026 this,\u201d he told Al Jazeera with a pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis\u201d was the Russian missile attack that killed 32 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150 on July 31. More than a dozen of those injured were children.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin said the attack targeted \u201cmilitary factories, a military airstrip\u2019s infrastructure and an ammunition depot\u201d.<\/p>\n

In reality, an Iskander ballistic missile hit the nine-storey apartment building next to the Paremsky family home in this rustically quiet neighbourhood that has no factories, military bases or sites, and sits more than 10km (6 miles) west of central Kyiv.<\/p>\n

\"AA makeshift memorial for the victims of the July 31, 2025, missile attack [Mansur Mirovalev\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople cried for help from under the debris. Everything was on fire,\u201d Paremsky said, recalling the hours after the attack. He and his parents helped survivors and rescue workers dig up the wounded and the dead.<\/p>\n

Witnesses described the strike\u2019s sound as a snake-like hiss that evolved into an eardrum-popping boom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear the hissing, and one moment later, I am thrown away from the window\u201d by the shockwave, said Hanna, a survivor.<\/p>\n

Among the dead were 23-year-old Mykyta and Sofia Lamekhovs and their two-year-old son Lev, who had fled Sloviansk, the first Ukrainian town that was briefly seized by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014 and is close to the front line again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were such a beautiful couple, I saw them the day before,\u201d one of the neighbours sighed. \u201cShe had just gotten pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Just one of the many families killed or destroyed otherwise by the russian missile strikes on Kyiv on July 31 just because they were Ukrainians.<\/p>\n

Could have been any of you. pic.twitter.com\/wazFzVDbtp<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Olga Klymenko (@OlgaK2013) August 2, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The strike was the second-deadliest wartime assault in Kyiv. A missile and drone attack in July 2024 killed 33 people, including five children, and damaged Ukraine\u2019s largest children\u2019s hospital.<\/p>\n

The recent attack was the horrifying pinnacle of months-long, almost nightly pummelling of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.<\/p>\n

Each involved hundreds of drones and dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles \u2013 and followed the Kremlin\u2019s daytime assurances of its readiness to start peace talks, but with a list of conditions that looked like a capitulation demand.<\/p>\n

\"PlasticPlastic film replaced windows damaged by the July 31 attack [Mansur Mirovalev\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

And yet, for many survivors, the most dreadful aftermath is not Moscow\u2019s narratives or United States President Donald Trump\u2019s indecisiveness towards harsher sanctions on Russia.<\/p>\n

It is losing hope for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy was here. And [Kyiv mayor Vitali] Klitschko. They all said we\u2019d get help. And here were are, with no windows, no subsidies, nothing,\u201d Tamara, a resident, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Most residents covered their windows, gouged out by the blast, with plastic film because the one-time subsidy payment of 10,000 hryvnia ($241) barely covers the cost of a single plastic window.<\/p>\n

Hanna claimed that when she was trying to receive the subsidy, a city official told her she had not been listed in the official registry of tenants.<\/p>\n

To get registered, she would need the help of a \u201cfirm\u201d that would charge her 10,000 hryvnia ($241) to get the job done within a day or two, she claimed to have heard from the official.<\/p>\n

Such \u201cfirms\u201d often work next to government offices and represent \u201chidden corruption,\u201d according to experts.<\/p>\n

But in this case, the charge seems overtly high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very strange that, according to the resident, the cost of the subsidy is equal to the cost of assistance,\u201d Serhii Mitkalyk, head of the Anti-Corruption Headquarters, a nongovernmental group in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\"CarsCars damaged by Russian drones during the July 31 attacks [Mansur Mirovalev\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

A natural gas pipe that leaked after the blast has been shut off, leaving residents with no fuel for their stoves. Locals accused authorities of refusing to provide a discount for the electricity they now have to use for cooking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are left alone to do everything by ourselves with no help,\u201d Hanna said.<\/p>\n

District and city administrations have not commented on the residents\u2019 claims, asking for written requests that remain unanswered.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera has previously<\/a> reported on years-long delays in the reconstruction of war-damaged<\/a> apartment buildings and houses.<\/p>\n

There are high \u201ccorruption risks\u201d during the actual renovation of damaged buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest abuses are seen during centralised procurement [of construction materials] for reconstruction,\u201d anticorruption expert Mitkalyk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur organisation monitors such tenders and identifies cases where prices for construction materials are inflated by 20\u201330 percent compared to market prices,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these cases have already become the subject of criminal proceedings and court rulings, but in general, this is the usual work of law enforcement agencies in the field of recovery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And then, there is the sheer size of the problem.<\/p>\n

Some 60 million square metres (646 million square feet) of housing have been destroyed since 2022, and at least $86bn is needed to rebuild them, authorities said earlier this year.<\/p>\n

About 4.6 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and some 600,000 are registered to get new housing.<\/p>\n

In May, the government reported that some 100,000 Ukrainian families have used eVidnodlennya (eRestoration), a programme to compensate the loss of damaged or destroyed real estate.<\/p>\n

One can use their smartphone to apply for a subsidy, upload documents and get a money transfer \u2013 or go to a government office in person.<\/p>\n

\"ResidentsResidents react after the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian capital on July 31, 2025 [Thomas Peter\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

However, almost a quarter \u2013 24 percent \u2013 of applicants could not get them because of bureaucratic problems, Olena Shulyak, head of the ruling Servant of the People party said on August 1.<\/p>\n

Some had no smartphones, others lacked documents, and many cannot get to government offices from areas near the front line, she said.<\/p>\n

But the most vulnerable group of homeless Ukrainians \u2013 those from Russia-occupied areas that make up some 19 percent of Ukraine\u2019s territory \u2013 cannot use the programme because officials are unable to inspect their damaged or destroyed property.<\/p>\n

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine\u2019s lower house of parliament, voted in a law that simplifies the procedure in December, but Zelenskyy has not signed it yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo real refugee who lost everything in occupied areas got a single penny of this money,\u201d Petro Andriushchenko, former mayor of Russia-occupied southeastern city of Mariupol, wrote on Telegram in May. \u201cThe lives of real internally displaced persons have not improved a bit. Not at all. All of this is the great government scam.\u201d<\/p>\n