On that cool night from April 27 to 28, nothing foreshadowed trouble. And early in the morning the alarm rang out. Around 4:30 there was a massive air attack. Two powerful explosions in Uman, as experts later said, were caused by Russian missiles. They took the lives of 23 civilians, including six children. One of the rockets hit a multi-story building and destroyed one of the two entrances to the entire height. The second hit a warehouse nearby.
The whole day, and then the next, rescuers and medics did what they could: put out the fire, dismantled rubble, searched for people, took residents out of damaged apartments, examined the building. Both local and specialists who quickly arrived from other cities of Cherkasy and the capital worked here. All regional services overcame the consequences of the tragedy and helped the victims. At the scene more than 27 units of equipment and 106 personnel specialists worked only with DSNS. Among them are psychologists, who provided help to burned relatives of the victims and frightened residents of nearby houses, a total of 110 people.
“There are no more neighbors,” says local resident Serhii Lyubivskyi with tears and lists the families who lived on different floors of the entrance destroyed by the Russians. “Just yesterday I saw many of them… Everyone here knows everyone, because they are from the same factory, they moved into this building in 1993.”
“What to think about them,” asked one of the Umanians, as if answering an unasked question about the invaders who caused the tragedy (a lot of people came to the scene of the tragedy to help in whatever way they could). – They don’t care who to kill as much as possible. Isn’t that humane?”
According to the mayor of Uman, Iryna Pletnyova, 216 people were registered in the destroyed building. 109 of them lived in 46 actually destroyed apartments. Currently, a shelter for the affected residents has been set up at the school near the destroyed building.
The Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, reported the details of the liquidation of the consequences of the enemy shelling in Uman: “Uman has been living a relatively calm life lately. This tragedy confirms that the Russian Federation’s terrorist attack on civilian infrastructure continues. And that’s why we are sure that we should continue to fight and do everything so that the enemy leaves our country, – the minister emphasized. — We identify bodies that we cannot recognize. There is a DNA laboratory on site. All relatives and relatives of citizens who lived in this house can apply to provide their DNA sample for comparative analysis.”
In the process of identification, it turned out that, in addition to adults, six children died. Experts from the Cherkasy NDEKC worked at the scene of the terrible crime. So that he does not go unpunished, everything should be properly documented, experts said.
On the morning of April 29, five people were in the Uman hospital, injured as a result of the explosion of a Russian rocket in a residential building. As Oleksandr Maksyutov, deputy director of emergency and surgical care, said in a comment to one of the TV channels, one person remains in a serious condition in the hospital. We are talking about a patient who was delivered with an open craniocerebral injury, he was immediately operated on. The condition of two more is assessed as moderate. Two others are in a serious condition and need treatment.
The search and rescue operation lasted 35 hours in Uman. The next steps are the liquidation of the consequences of this terrible tragedy.
The Cherkasy Regional Prosecutor’s Office started a pre-trial investigation on the fact of violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with intentional murder (Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). According to the investigation, on April 28, 2023, around 04:30, the occupiers attacked the city of Uman with cruise missiles, previously Kh-101, one of which hit a nine-story residential building, the entrance was completely destroyed. As a result of the airstrike, in addition to the high-rise building, nearby buildings, cars, and a school were damaged.
People brought flowers and children’s toys to the destroyed house in Uman on Friday night and on weekends. This is how they honor the memory of the dead. They simply put them on the green carpet of the flower bed. And next to it, petals of flowers flew from the young cherry trees, like the tears of peaceful people burned by misfortune.
