“It was not meant to be Masha. Her husband, Danylo Yivzhenko, is the soldier in the family. As a combat medic with Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade, he made the decision to go to war, knowing the risk. Masha was a civilian, back home in Kyiv, worrying about her husband on the front line. But”, — write on: www.cnn.com
It was not meant to be Masha. Her husband, Danylo Yivzhenko, is the soldier in the family. As a combat medic with Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade, he made the decision to go to war, knowing the risk. Masha was a civilian, back home in Kyiv, worrying about her husband on the front line.
But it was Masha, 29, who was killed by the Russians when a powerful drone struck her office building in the Ukrainian capital on September 25.
It’s an injustice that Yivzhenko cannot comprehend. “I am a soldier and I am fighting against Russia. If a Russian military drone or a ballistic missile, or whatever else, kills me – that is fair. We kill Russians. Russians kill us. We are servicemen; we understand what we are doing,” he told CNN.
“Killing a soldier is horrible, but it is normal. But Masha was a civilian. She did not assemble drones, she did not hold a weapon in her hands, she did not wear a military uniform. She was a civilian in a civilian city who was simply doing her civilian job that day.”
Daily life as it was known in Kyiv stopped on August 27, when Russia began pounding the city with near non-stop aerial assaults. Since then, not a single day has passed without an air raid warning in the city. On average, there have been seven air raid alerts a day. Some days, there have been as many as 13.
The Ukrainian military is increasingly unable to defend Kyiv from these assaults because of critical shortages of air defense weapons to bring down Russia’s missiles and its newest jet-powered drones.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been begging allies to help, and the Ukrainian military is racing to develop effective interceptors domestically – but neither has yet led to a meaningful shift.
In just over a month – between August 27 and Oct 4 – at least 98 people have been killed and 435 injured in Kyiv and the wider Kyiv region, a number that is significantly higher than in previous months.
Several high-profile buildings at the heart of the capital have been struck by Russian drones during this period, including the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Academy of Sciences, High Council of Justice and a TV and internet provider’s data center.
Russia consistently claims it only strikes military targets, despite ample evidence of civilian sites being struck on a regular basis.
Russia used to launch its aerial attacks overnight under the cover of darkness, to minimize Kyiv’s chances of intercepting them. This meant people were often exhausted after a sleepless night in a shelter, but their lives could go on relatively as normal during the day.
But Russia’s newest jet-powered drones have made it possible for Moscow to terrorize Ukraine at any time of the day. And each time Russia fires at Kyiv, an air raid alarm is triggered and life in the capital stops. Many businesses and services, including some public transit operations, shut down, and everyone is meant to head to a shelter.
The Ukrainian capital is split in half by the Dnipro river. The right bank is home to the majority of Kyiv’s business centers, offices and government institutions, whereas the left bank is mostly residential.
The bridges connecting the two sides are crucial – some 600,000 vehicles cross them every day. And these vital links have become the most recent target for Russia.
Kyiv’s Southern Bridge, which serves ground transportation as well as the city’s subway system, was hit five times within two days on Thursday and Friday. The city’s Northern Bridge was hit twice on Saturday and Sunday. The disruption has forced Kyiv authorities to start work on creating a new pontoon bridge.