Kyiv, Ukraine – A number of framed images on the yellow floor drown amid bouquets of wilting flowers below a wind-shaken strip of pink tape.
Above them are towering rectangles of broken concrete – remnants of a blast-gutted condominium constructing.
Sasha Paremsky, 11, stood in entrance of the scene, quietly describing a boy in one of many images.
“The scariest factor is to see my good friend’s picture there. We’d simply met to play soccer earlier than … this,” he informed Al Jazeera with a pause.
“This” was the Russian missile assault that killed 32 folks, together with 5 youngsters, and wounded greater than 150 on July 31. Greater than a dozen of these injured have been youngsters.
The Kremlin mentioned the assault focused “army factories, a army airstrip’s infrastructure and an ammunition depot”.
In actuality, an Iskander ballistic missile hit the nine-storey condominium constructing subsequent to the Paremsky household residence on this rustically quiet neighbourhood that has no factories, army bases or websites, and sits greater than 10km (6 miles) west of central Kyiv.
“Folks cried for assist from below the particles. Every little thing was on hearth,” Paremsky mentioned, recalling the hours after the assault. He and his dad and mom helped survivors and rescue staff dig up the wounded and the lifeless.
Witnesses described the strike’s sound as a snake-like hiss that advanced into an eardrum-popping growth.
“I hear the hissing, and one second later, I’m thrown away from the window” by the shockwave, mentioned Hanna, a survivor.
Among the many lifeless have been 23-year-old Mykyta and Sofia Lamekhovs and their two-year-old son Lev, who had fled Sloviansk, the primary Ukrainian city that was briefly seized by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014 and is near the entrance line once more.
“They have been such a fantastic couple, I noticed them the day earlier than,” one of many neighbours sighed. “She had simply gotten pregnant.”
Simply one of many many households killed or destroyed in any other case by the russian missile strikes on Kyiv on July 31 simply because they have been Ukrainians.
Might have been any of you. pic.twitter.com/wazFzVDbtp
— Olga Klymenko (@OlgaK2013) August 2, 2025
The strike was the second-deadliest wartime assault in Kyiv. A missile and drone assault in July 2024 killed 33 folks, together with 5 youngsters, and broken Ukraine’s largest youngsters’s hospital.
The current assault was the horrifying pinnacle of months-long, nearly nightly pummelling of Kyiv and different Ukrainian cities.
Every concerned a whole lot of drones and dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles – and adopted the Kremlin’s daytime assurances of its readiness to begin peace talks, however with an inventory of circumstances that appeared like a capitulation demand.
And but, for a lot of survivors, probably the most dreadful aftermath shouldn’t be Moscow’s narratives or United States President Donald Trump’s indecisiveness in direction of harsher sanctions on Russia.
It’s dropping hope for assist.
“So, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy was right here. And [Kyiv mayor Vitali] Klitschko. All of them mentioned we’d get assist. And right here have been are, with no home windows, no subsidies, nothing,” Tamara, a resident, informed Al Jazeera.
Most residents lined their home windows, gouged out by the blast, with plastic movie as a result of the one-time subsidy cost of 10,000 hryvnia ($241) barely covers the price of a single plastic window.
Hanna claimed that when she was attempting to obtain the subsidy, a metropolis official informed her she had not been listed within the official registry of tenants.
To get registered, she would wish the assistance of a “agency” that may cost her 10,000 hryvnia ($241) to get the job accomplished inside a day or two, she claimed to have heard from the official.
Such “companies” typically work subsequent to authorities workplaces and symbolize “hidden corruption,” in accordance with consultants.
However on this case, the cost appears overtly excessive.
“It’s very unusual that, in accordance with the resident, the price of the subsidy is the same as the price of help,” Serhii Mitkalyk, head of the Anti-Corruption Headquarters, a nongovernmental group in Kyiv, informed Al Jazeera.
A pure gasoline pipe that leaked after the blast has been shut off, leaving residents with no gasoline for his or her stoves. Locals accused authorities of refusing to supply a reduction for the electrical energy they now have to make use of for cooking.
“We’re left alone to do every thing by ourselves with no assist,” Hanna mentioned.
District and metropolis administrations haven’t commented on the residents’ claims, asking for written requests that stay unanswered.
Al Jazeera has beforehand reported on years-long delays within the reconstruction of war-damaged condominium buildings and homes.
There are excessive “corruption dangers” throughout the precise renovation of broken buildings.
“The most important abuses are seen throughout centralised procurement [of construction materials] for reconstruction,” anticorruption skilled Mitkalyk mentioned.
“Our organisation screens such tenders and identifies circumstances the place costs for building supplies are inflated by 20–30 p.c in comparison with market costs,” he mentioned.
“A few of these circumstances have already turn out to be the topic of legal proceedings and court docket rulings, however usually, that is the standard work of regulation enforcement businesses within the subject of restoration,” he mentioned.
After which, there’s the sheer dimension of the issue.
Some 60 million sq. metres (646 million sq. ft) of housing have been destroyed since 2022, and at the very least $86bn is required to rebuild them, authorities mentioned earlier this 12 months.
About 4.6 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and a few 600,000 are registered to get new housing.
In Could, the federal government reported that some 100,000 Ukrainian households have used eVidnodlennya (eRestoration), a programme to compensate the lack of broken or destroyed actual property.
One can use their smartphone to use for a subsidy, add paperwork and get a cash switch – or go to a authorities workplace in particular person.
Nevertheless, nearly 1 / 4 – 24 p.c – of candidates couldn’t get them due to bureaucratic issues, Olena Shulyak, head of the ruling Servant of the Folks celebration mentioned on August 1.
Some had no smartphones, others lacked paperwork, and lots of can not get to authorities workplaces from areas close to the entrance line, she mentioned.
However probably the most weak group of homeless Ukrainians – these from Russia-occupied areas that make up some 19 p.c of Ukraine’s territory – can not use the programme as a result of officers are unable to examine their broken or destroyed property.
The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s decrease home of parliament, voted in a regulation that simplifies the process in December, however Zelenskyy has not signed it but.
“No actual refugee who misplaced every thing in occupied areas bought a single penny of this cash,” Petro Andriushchenko, former mayor of Russia-occupied southeastern metropolis of Mariupol, wrote on Telegram in Could. “The lives of actual internally displaced individuals haven’t improved a bit. In no way. All of that is the nice authorities rip-off.”