The overnight Russian drone strike at a high-rise building in Dnipro on 8 November damaged the apartment of Priamyi TV journalist Tetyana Zaparya. The journalist and her three-year-old daughter miraculously made it out unharmed, Tetyana Zaparya tells Kateryna Lysiuk, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Dnipropetrovsk oblast.

The journalist and her daughter were at home at the moment of the strike. According to Tetyana, the child was already asleep, and she was on duty, because there was a message about the danger. When she saw on the monitoring Telegram channels that drones were flying towards their neighborhood, she took her daughter in her arms and moved towards the vestibule.

The hole left from a Shahed drone hitting the building, photo via Suspilne Dnipro

“It’s a good thing we didn’t have time to get out [into the common hallway], as the blow came from that side. We didn’t immediately realise the full scale. We were saved by one wall of the neighbour’s apartment, it didn’t collapse through some kind of miracle. That’s the reason why my child and I are not physically injured while the neighbour we share the common hallway with was all covered in glass shards,” said Tetyana.

At first, she thought that the Shahed had fallen down somewhere in the yard, the journalist says; then as she tried to step out onto the balcony, she found it had been blasted away. The neighbouring apartments were on fire.

“I immediately started calling 102, calling all the services. I helped my neighbour open the door, which was jammed,” said Tetyana Zaparya. She added that what saved them was having agreed with their neighbor in advance not to lock the front doors to the apartments. She says that if the doors had been locked, they wouldn’t have been able to get out without rescuers’ help.

The building’s staircase after the Shahed strike, photo by Suspilne Dnipro

As they were leaving the building, Tetyana saw that the fire was already intense. The journalist’s apartment was not affected by the fire, but it was flooded with water as the firefighters were extinguishing it. The journalist and her daughter are temporarily staying with friends.

“Our segment and the one next to ours have been evacuated, they most likely be demolished. They are uninhabitable, because the loadbearing structures were damaged. Even the State Emergency Service, as they let us in a day later to pick up some things, someone was always on duty at the landing,” the journalist said.

The damaged loadbearing structures of two segments of the building struck by a Shahed drone, photo via Suspilne Dnipro

Tetyana Zaparya says that her daughter still asks if the “terrible adventure” is over, becuase seeing the destroyed house from the outside had scared her. “She said it was a terrible adventure. I was carrying her across the yard, and she asked me, ‘Mom, are they filming a horror movie?’ I said yes, and she said, ‘Wow, what a scary movie,’” the journalist shared.

Tetyana lived in the building for 15 years. According to the journalist, they had a very friendly community in the house, the neighbours knew each other well. After the tragedy, when the State Emergency Service allowed her to come in to pick up her things, the journalist realised that she had not taken a single photo of the destroyed apartment as she was leaving it “forever.”

“When the State Emergency Service allowed us to enter the building and take our things, everyone walked out with full garbage bags. I mean, the people, knowing that their segment of the building was to be demolished, still tidied up the staircase landings, swept up the glass shards… That was the first and only time when I cried. People are leaving their homes forever and taking out the garbage! Not their belongings, but the garbage,” the journalist said.

The 8 November strike in Dnipro killed 3 people, injured 13, destroyed parts of two segments of a building and damages hundreds of apartments.

Residents carrying their belongings and garbage out of the damaged apartments, photo via Suspilne Dnipro