Ten minutes to rescue from the rubble: Russians attack residential buildings in Kramatorsk with aerial bombs
People who have just become homeless cry out near the burning buildings. To provide them with first aid, paramedics hold their hands and prevent them from running toward the ruins. Overcome with grief, the victims shout curses and wipe their tears, smearing ash and dust across their cheeks. The apartments where they lived for decades are burning right before their eyes. Some had even packed their bags to evacuate, but the aerial bombs struck a few hours too soon. Frontliner witnessed how people in Kramatorsk react to losing their homes due to Russian bomb strikes.
Liudmyla Solntseva repeats in confusion that she needs to pour water for the hedgehogs. She went out of her home precisely for this reason. Behind her, the apartment continues to burn. An aerial bomb hit the building at the exact moment she was stepping out into the street. Now the 74-year-old woman casts a bewildered look around the dusty courtyard where she has lived for the last half-century. Had she been inside at the moment of the strike, she would have been killed. The blast destroyed the roof and all the walls of the apartment, tearing through the floor between two levels.
Taking just a few steps is a challenge for the legs and walking stick of pensioner Liudmyla Solntseva. The courtyard is littered with fragments of the aerial bomb, concrete, and shattered glass. With difficulty the pensioner steps over wooden beams that were someone’s windows and doors only 10 minutes ago. Nails stick out of most of them, and trickles of blood trail away from a few.
I left the house
to pour water for the hedgehogs.
“I have already been paralyzed twice,” Liudmyla says. “I have a severe disability, and there was a time I could not even get out of bed. But now I can. I left the house to pour water for the hedgehogs. They started coming into our courtyard, so many of them… I lost the bottle somewhere. I also took a bag for tomatoes, my documents, and some money. I wanted to go to the market. But now, it is probably closed, right?”
Even though she is swaying on her feet, Liudmyla Solntseva carefully wipes the leaves and dust off the bench with her palm before sitting down. Several times, she raises her eyes and stares through the tree canopy at what is left of her apartment. The room and kitchen are already burning out. The other two rooms have no walls, floor, or roof: they were at the epicenter of the explosion.
While the paramedic examines the woman’s head, she obediently stays still. She double-checks where she should look, tilting her head to one side. When asked to touch her nose with her finger, she misses it, landing near her ear instead.
“Boys, there is no need,” Liudmyla says. “Something fell on my head, some pieces, like concrete. I brushed it off, but I still cannot shake it all out. There is dust on my hand, on my face. But there is no blood, is there?”
The paramedic nods and asks if there are relatives who can take care of her. If not, Liudmyla will be taken to the hospital, and volunteers will take it from there. At the mention of volunteers, Liudmyla Solntseva anxiously waves her hands.
“My children have passed away, and I have no one left,” Liudmyla says. “My niece should be here soon. The neighbors have already told her what happened. She will come, and I will wait for her. You should go, someone needs you more than I do.”
Her niece, Tania, is the only relative she has left in Kramatorsk. Liudmyla Solntseva’s daughter died at the age of 15, and her son passed away at the beginning of the war. Until this day, the pensioner’s only wish was to “lie beside them when the time comes” in the local cemetery. The woman had never even considered evacuation. Now, however, she will have to, as it is difficult for her niece to care for her.
“I am already an old woman,” Liudmyla says. “I wear adult diapers, and I need someone to watch over me because I have incontinence. I try to manage on my own, but my hands shake. And I have been paralyzed twice. One moment something hurts, then my joints ache, then I have no strength.”
A few minutes later, the elderly woman is no longer on the bench. The rescuers, who continue to extinguish the flames, explain that her niece took Liudmyla away but kept repeating that she did not know what to do with her.
“I feel so sorry for the woman,” rescuer Ivan Balitskyi says. “She should have been allowed to live out her final years in peace, pouring water for the hedgehogs or cats. Because of those bastards, it is completely unclear where she will end up. What is going to happen to her at her age?”
The wounded must be pulled from the rubble in the first 10 minutes
Near the neighboring building, a paramedic is digging another woman out from under the rubble. The task is difficult: space is tight, the room is filled with smoke, and the floor is collapsing underfoot. The smoke irritates the lungs, so with every passing minute, the man coughs more frequently. Time and air are limited resources.
“We need to get her out within 10 minutes, because her lungs are already… not exactly young,” police paramedic Andrii Bulavin explains. “The smoke suffocates even a healthy person, making every single minute crucial. On top of that, the woman is injured and panicking.”
The woman was leaving her apartment when the guided aerial bomb struck. The blast wave threw her against the wall, and she could not free herself from the debris on her own. A few minutes later, the paramedic pulls the pensioner outside.
And they say that elderly women
are weak and fragile.
There is a layer of dust on her face and hands, but no visible traces of blood, except for minor scratches on her legs and body. When asked what hurts and where, she initially stays silent as if she does not understand. A few seconds later, she says in confusion, “Everything hurts… But I am in one piece.” Her injuries are minimal. After the paramedic, medical staff examine the woman in the ambulance before taking her to the hospital.
“In my experience, if a man or a young woman under 40 had been in her place, we would have pulled out minced meat,” Andrii Bulavin notes. “But she does not have a single fracture, dislocation, or anything. Just a few bruises and shallow scratches. Only fright. And they say that elderly women are weak and fragile.”
The volunteers, who arrive 10 minutes later, add that the woman was supposed to leave Kramatorsk that very day. She had submitted an evacuation request, packed her bags, and was waiting for the car to arrive. Had the departure taken place a day earlier, she would have missed the bombing completely.
It is impossible to extinguish a burning high-rise during a drone attack
During the massive airstrike on Kramatorsk on August 25, 2026, the occupiers launched nine guided aerial bombs. One struck a multi-story building, leaving the upper floors blocked by fire and collapsed walls.
The asphalt near the building is flooded with water, but the fire cannot be extinguished. Eventually, one of the crews puts on protective masks: they will have to enter the stairwell to fight the fire from the inside.
“We hoped we could put it out with water from down here, but they (Ed. – flames) simply refuse to die down,” says Oleksandr Kharchenko, spokesman for the State Emergency Service in the Donetsk region. “We have to go upstairs. The temperature up there is just unbelievable.”
Following the rescuers, a woman rushes into the stairwell: her apartment on the sixth floor is not yet engulfed in flames. However, people are no longer allowed inside because all the floors are filled with smoke.
“But how am I supposed to take everything?” she cries out in despair to the rescuers as the police stop her. “It will all burn, boys! Put it out, I have nothing else besides this apartment. Boys, please do something.”
Another woman walks out of the neighboring stairwell carrying a cat in her arms. One of the neighbors gives her a pet carrier, and she places the frightened animal inside. She then returns to her apartment for her belongings. In the doorway, she passes a third woman carrying things in a white bedsheet. There is no time to pack them into suitcases.
“I just grab the first thing I see,” the woman with the bedsheet says.
A police officer leads one of the evacuated pensioners to a bench by the hand. Every step is difficult: the woman can barely walk, and the stress only worsens her swaying. At this moment, a buzzing sound fills the sky, followed by gunfire: Russian drones are flying in. An emergency responder shouts into a megaphone, urging people to scatter. Firefighters run out of the stairwells and take cover under the trees.
The drones are flying right here,
toward this building.
The day before, on August 24, the occupiers attacked a State Emergency Service vehicle responding to a call. The crew was wounded, but everyone survived. Therefore, no one risks ignoring safety protocols today.
“The drones are flying right here, toward this building,” the State Emergency Service spokesman explains. “There is equipment here, people, plenty of targets. Everything is exactly the way they ‘like’ it. Today, the Russians will be bombing this block. And this is very bad for the people, because as long as the attack continues, you cannot stay inside the building. This means the fire cannot be put out either. The guys are doing everything possible, but you understand: how can we work when they are launching drones at us?”
Residents of the burning apartments watch their neighbors from other stairwells carry their belongings out into the street. The fire creeps across the building. Two wounded people, whose arms and legs are being bandaged, cannot take their eyes off the upper floors. Another woman sobs: she never found her cat in the apartment, and the rescuers will no longer let anyone inside.
That day, the Russians would attack the affected neighborhoods for over seven hours. By evening, the fire would engulf the upper floors of three stairwells, leaving over 50 apartments completely burned out.
“Calming their nerves” among the ruined buildings
A few hours later, Liudmyla Solntseva’s building continues to burn. Firefighters extinguished it during the day, but now the flames have returned, their red tongues “licking up” the ruins.
The street is blanketed in smoke: the fire from the apartments has spread to the grass. Here and there, tongues of flame creep toward the trees that had already burned in the morning. Behind the neighboring building, a group of men sits near a bombed-out stairwell. Under the table is a bottle of alcohol and several plastic cups.
This is grief. We lost our homes, we lost absolutely everything.
Where am I supposed to sleep tonight? I have nothing left.
No belongings, no money. And I do not want anything anymore.
I just want to leave and go somewhere else, far, far away. I want nothing.
