Exhausted residents point out latest drone strike came hours after Donald Trump’s rare rebuke to Vladimir Putin
About 1am on Friday, Yuliia Verbytska woke to the sound of an air raid siren. She grabbed her teenage children – Dmitry, 17, and Olexiy, 12 – and sat in the corridor, checking her phone. In the sky above came an ominous whine. Minutes later, a Russian drone crashed into the disused soap factory down the road in Polyova Street. There was an enormous explosion.
“We don’t have a shelter in our building, so we hide behind two concrete walls. All the neighbours sit together. You wonder if this is your last moment,” she said. Friday’s raid followed a massive attack on Thursday on Verbytska’s home, Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and on the capital, Kyiv, where 12 people were killed. “I haven’t slept for two days,” she said wearily.
