Serhii Mandryk was on a call with acquaintances in Canada in the early hours of May 7. An air raid alert had sounded in Kyiv a few hours earlier but he decided to stay at home and go ahead with it rather than head for a shelter.
He assured everyone that “everything is fine,” but five minutes later he heard the familiar buzz of a Russian attack drone overhead.
“Then an explosion,” the retired photographer told the Kyiv Independent later that day, standing outside the damaged five-storey apartment building in which he lived.
“Shards from the window fell. I saw that the balcony above my apartment was on fire. I was not injured, but my apartment was damaged, windows were shattered, and tiles fell off the walls,” he added.
The building, in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv now has a large, black hole on the upper floor where the drone struck. Passersby look on in shock. Some take photos.
The smell of spring chestnut blossoms mixes with that of burnt furniture — glass shards, a blackened potato, and parts of the drone lie in the grass nearby.
“Shards from the window fell. I saw that the balcony above my apartment was on fire.”
Serhii Mandryk who lives in the residential building damaged as a result of a Russian drone attack on Kyiv on May 7, 2025 (Danylo Antoniuk/The Kyiv Independent)
While Mandryk was lucky to escape uninjured, others were less fortunate. Russia had launched a combined missile and drone attack on Kyiv overnight, killing two people and injuring eight others, including four children.
Three of the children were hospitalized with severe burns.
The two people who died lived in the same building as Mandryk — a 64-year-old woman identified as Tetiana by residents in the building, and her son in his late 20s.
According to the Kyiv Animal Rescue Group, both were volunteers for the organization and looked after 10 cats in their apartment. Only one is known to have survived the drone attack.
“Tetiana and I grew up together,” Liudmyla, a resident on the fourth floor of the building who asked to only be identified by her first name, told the Kyiv Independent.
“My God, she was still active, even though she was a pensioner. She fed all the birds, dogs, and cats,” she added.
Outside the damaged building, a team of volunteers are already at work, handing out coffee, water, pies, and mashed potatoes with meat cutlets.
Near the tent they’ve set up as their temporary base, a woman sits cradling her 11-year-old black cat, Krasulia. A tag depicting the Ukrainian flag hangs around its neck.
“She’s a poor thing,” the woman told the Kyiv Independent, requesting not to be named.
“She crawled under the bed. I had to pull her out — everyone was panicking. We woke up to the sound of air defenses and then we heard a drone flying very low,” she said.
And then the drone struck — she and her children ran out of the building as a neighbor went round banging on doors to make sure everyone was getting out.
The attack on the Ukrainian capital was yet another in a series of devastating attacks on civilians over recent weeks, a damning indictment of the ongoing, U.S.-led effort to bring about an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
It also came ahead of a supposed ceasefire, unilaterally declared by the Kremlin to mark Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9.
“Many times, Russians promised something, but they don’t keep their word. We don’t trust (them),” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at the site of the attack as he advised those affected on how to claim compensation for the damage caused.
“Imagine how these people in the damaged apartments feel.”
Oleh Borysovych who lives near the site of the attack on Kyiv on May 7 (Danylo Antoniuk/The Kyiv Independent)
The attack also damaged a supermarket, a pharmacy, a Ukrposhta post office, and several cars.
Oleh Borysovych, a resident from a nearby neighborhood, visits the area hit by the drone most days. He often stops here to buy onions and peas from women selling goods in an informal street market near the metro station.
He feels fortunate it was not his building that was struck. “We are the ones standing on the sidelines and watching. Imagine how these people (in the damaged apartments) feel,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
At the damaged post office, employees clear debris and broken glass. Yan Bedrytskyi, the head of Ukrposhta’s real estate management center for Kyiv Oblast, told the Kyiv Independent that postal workers were ensuring the branch would be up and running by tomorrow.
“We can’t stop our work — we have to keep serving people, distributing pensions,” he said.
But his optimism about the work of his company is not reflected in his views of Russia and the prospect of peace.
“I don’t see anything in this ceasefire. It won’t solve anything. We’ve already had a ceasefire before — and it ended in war,” he said.
Amid missile shortage, Ukraine’s air defenses are struggling under Russian ballistic attacks
As the air defense missile stocks run low and the future of U.S. military aid to Ukraine grows increasingly uncertain, Kyiv is under pressure to defend its sky. The concerns mount as Russia scales up its aerial attacks across Ukraine, combining ballistic missiles and drones to overwhelm air defenses.
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