KYIV -- "The biggest problem is how to explain to my daughter that she doesn't have a mother anymore," Yaroslav Ryabchuk, 34, who lost his wife as the result of a Russian missile attack on June 1, told RFE/RL as law enforcement officers were securing the site of the strike that killed her.
Natalya Veychenko, his wife of 17 years, died on the street while she was waiting with their 9-year-old daughter, Polina, to enter a bomb shelter at a medical clinic, which was locked, according to several witnesses. She was killed by falling fragments of the Russian Iskander missile along with another woman and her daughter.
Minutes before the debris from the intercepted missile killed them, Ryabchuk went away to call out the guard in charge of opening the shelter. He then heard an explosion, he said, and ran back to find dead bodies amid the rubble and shattered window glass.
"What's left for me is to seek revenge," Ryabchuk said, his voice cracking with emotion, declaring that he is going to join the army to fight against Russia.
As he spoke, other residents of the Lisoviy Masyv neighborhood in the capital's Desnyanskiy district stood nearby, talking to police, journalists, and each other. Many were still shocked several hours after the attack, which occurred at night, like most of the frequent recent aerial attacks -- at about 3 a.m.
Anastasia Dubinina, who moved to Kyiv in October after a missile destroyed her apartment in Slovyansk, in the war-ravaged Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, was holding her daughter Myroslava in her arms and trying to calm her down. At night, after shards of glass injured her husband's back and legs, the family sought relative safety in a corridor, where walls can provide some protection.
"When I first saw him in the bedroom, I thought he was dead," she said.
Larysa Sukhomlyn knew the two women and the girl who died. When the air alert went off at night, she got her granddaughter dressed and they headed to the shelter, as they do almost every night. But, before they left their block, they heard the explosion, so they returned to their flat. "I don't even know if it's better to stay in or not," she said, adding that she didn't sleep well for three days.
The pre-dawn attack on June 1 -- which is celebrated as International Children's Day in Ukraine and other countries in the region -- was one of 19 waves of Russian drone and missile strikes targeting Kyiv since the beginning of May.
The attacks have been some of the most intense since Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But Ukraine’s air defenses have proved increasingly efficient in shooting down the near-nightly barrages of drones and missiles, both cruise and ballistic.
On June 1, all 10 missiles launched by Russia were destroyed, according to the Ukrainian military, but missile fragments fell on the medical clinic as well as a kindergarten, a school, and a police station, and also damaged apartment buildings, a water pipeline, and cars.
Residents of the neighborhood told RFE/RL it was not the first time that they had been unable to get into the shelter quickly. According to Ryabchuk, it usually took the guard up to 10 minutes to open it -- and on June 1, he said, people were "knocking at the shelter's doors before they died."
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko came to the site in the morning and met with the outraged residents, announcing an investigation -- four people were later detained -- and steps aimed to ensure swift access to bomb shelters. The city canceled all scheduled International Children's Day events.
Alina Melnychenko, who spent the night of the attack in a shelter at a nearby school with her daughters, Liza and Alisa, told RFE/RL that they were going to spend the rest of Children's Day underground -- exactly where they have spent many nights in recent weeks and months.
"I thought one can get used to it, but that is not true," she said of the frequent air-raid alerts.
Russia baselessly claims that it does not target civilians, but many of the victims of its unprovoked invasion have been children.
On June 1, Ukrianian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Russia to immediately stop committing what they said were war crimes against Ukrainian children, including their forced transfer to Russia.
UN human rights monitors said six children were killed and 34 were wounded last month alone. Since February 2022, at least 525 children have been killed and at least 1,047 injured, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine -- but as with adults, the actual toll is believed to be substantially higher.
"Sadly, as the world marks International Children's Day, there is little to celebrate in Ukraine where civilians, including children, continue to pay a heavy price," said Matilda Bogner, the mission's chief.
Fifteen months into Russia's full-scale invasion, the threat of attacks from the air has become an everyday presence looming over Kyiv, where balmy weather and blossoming chestnut trees have brought some relief to residents after a long period of intermittent power shortages and heating disruptions caused by Russian attacks on infrastructure.
But after a month of relentless Russian air strikes, the suffering and death of children has amplified concerns about life in an atmosphere of normalized terror.
On May 30, First Lady Olena Zelenska tweeted a video of panicked, screaming children running for a subway station in Kyiv's Podil district during a rare and massive Russian daytime missile attack that caused widespread anxiety because of the series of loud explosions in the city.
The day before, Zelenska republished a video shot by RFE/RL reporters showing a boy and a girl -- Marko, 6, and Alisa, 8 -- who survived a missile attack on their apartment block that killed a 32-year-old women and injured six. "How did we even survive?" Marko asks. "I don't know," Alisa answers.
"Why did it happen to me?" Marko says, surrounded by rubble near his home.
As many Kyiv residents endure exhaustion and distress after sleepless nights, the city's children, many of them out of school as of June 1, are starting a second summer clouded and colored indelibly by the war.
On a recent afternoon, a group of boys played with plastic toy guns close to Kyiv's Shchekavytsya hill. "I killed you," a boy with thick glasses shouted joyfully. "No way," replied the other boy, who was dressed in a child-sized military uniform. "I have a bulletproof vest."
