A woman pinned beneath concrete, a man with a badly broken leg, a child trapped under the rubble.
The aftermath of Thursday’s Russian drone and missile strike on Kyiv was grimly familiar: residents clawing through debris as rescuers arrived, against a backdrop of anguished cries and groans.
Among those who rushed to help was 19-year-old Vladislav Kalashnikov. Though his own flat had been torn apart in the blast, he ran to assist neighbours in a nearby block.
“I wasn’t frightened – I went straight to help,” he told Reuters outside the partly destroyed building on the eastern edge of Kyiv, where all but one of the at least 18 victims of the strikes across the city had been killed.
Footage filmed by the aspiring lawyer on his mobile phone showed a nightmarish scene of flames, twisted steel, shattered brickwork and broken glass.
Once he had checked on his family’s safety, Kalashnikov moved through the wreckage, where he came across a man lying helpless with a broken leg.
“He was screaming for help,” he recalled. “There was also a child crying for help. We helped the child first – she was trapped beneath the rubble.”
Kalashnikov, calm as he spoke, also described trying with others to pull free a woman with a severe head wound who was pinned under a concrete slab.
Explosions thundered in the distance as they worked, his video showed.
“We couldn’t lift the block,” he said quietly, lowering his eyes. It was not immediately clear if she had survived.
As he spoke, rescue workers carried away the dead in black body bags.
Kalashnikov said, like many Ukrainians, he had become accustomed to the increasingly frequent barrages that Russia which denies targeting civilians has launched against Kyiv and other cities.
Despite his close brush with death, he insisted he had no plans to leave Ukraine, even though the government this week lifted a ban on men aged 18 to 22 travelling abroad.
“I want to continue my studies,” he said. “My future is here.”
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