‘I want Putin to die’: Shock and anger after dozens of Russian missiles hit Kyiv
I met Larysa standing on broken glass outside her Kyiv apartment block trying to convince two council workmen to come up to her flat and mend her shattered windows.
Only hours earlier she had been shaken to the core by a huge explosion in the residential complex car park three floors beneath her.
She invited us inside saying she had been terrified by the blast.
Larysa was clearly in shock and very teary.
As we walked towards the entrance to her block I looked up; dozens and dozens of windows were shattered for floor after floor of the building.
Inside, the workmen started clearing up while we chatted.
“There was an explosion, and of course, I jumped immediately,” she told me.
“I just looked outside and saw people running, so I ran through my apartment and checked all my windows… and then I saw the ambulance and fire engines arrive 15 minutes later.”
She kept telling me how she worries about her grandchildren, so I asked her if she could try to explain to another grandmother in the UK what it’s like living through this war.
“Oh, don’t even ask, most of all I worry about my children and grandchildren, one of my sons is on the frontline, the oldest one. I don’t worry about myself, I have thick skin, so I am okay, but my children…”
‘Let them be cursed!’
Larysa grew increasingly upset as we spoke – and she is particularly upset with Russia, its people, and President Putin.
“May they be cursed! I hope they can hear me, even friends I have known there my whole life… let them be cursed!
“I don’t worry about myself, I’m old, but I worry about my children and grandchildren,” she reiterated.
Shrapnel scars children’s playground
In the car park below, police searched for fragments of missile that hit this residential neighbourhood in Kyiv, in Svyatoshyns’kyi district. They were trying to figure out exactly what it was.
The Russians fired a whole range of weapons across the country, shattering the morning peace with devastating effect.
