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‘Peace’ in Dnipro shattered by Russian rocket attack [1]
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Date: 2023-01
For a long time last year, Dnipro was considered one of the most calm cities in Ukraine.
“Here is some peaceful life again,” wrote prominent science fiction writer Oleh Ladyzhenskyi when he arrived in Dnipro from Kharkiv. “People and cars on the streets, shops are open, buses are running, there’s nothing exploding anywhere. It seems unnatural.”
Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s largest industrial cities, is relatively close to the war’s front line, which runs from Kherson in the south, through Donbas, to near Kharkiv in the north. The city has been a key logistical and humanitarian hub since Russia’s invasion on 24 February. But by the autumn, it felt as if people in Dnipro preferred to forget the chaos of the first days of the war.
In February and March, crowds of Dnipro residents flocked onto evacuation trains. Those who stayed behind checked the streets for devices that could guide Russian bombers, dismantled satellite dishes to avoid giving enemy rockets ‘something to aim for’, and reported their neighbours to police for turning on lights against the advice of the media, who suggested they could be used as signals to the enemy.
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But the initial panic passed quickly. Many residents began ignoring the daily air raid alerts. Anti-tank devices and sandbag barricades were gradually removed from the city’s pavements. Soon enough, those who had left Dnipro for western Ukraine or to go abroad returned.
Of course, Russian rockets did hit the city from time to time. The first casualties were firefighters, who were stranded at the city’s bombed-out airport ahead of a repeat strike in April. Residents who lived near the city’s famous military and machine factories, such as the Yuzhmash aerospace plant, suffered from attacks on these strategic sites. And funerals, obituaries and notices about missing persons, which flooded the public space after each major battle, remained a constant reminder that life in Dnipro was peaceful only in comparison with other cities.
But any sense of peace was shattered on 14 January, when a Russian X-22 rocket – designed to target aircraft carriers – struck an apartment block on the Victory Embankment of the Dnipro river. Forty-five people, including six children, have been found dead, with many more missing – despite the efforts of rescue teams – in the ruins of the building. On 17 January, the city’s authorities announced that the search for survivors had been called off.
Refugees in their own city
In recent months, Dnipro institutions have been offering displaced persons assistance that many think should be provided by the state.
The city’s central library has served as a help centre for people displaced from Mariupol, which is now under Russian occupation. Near the library, a once-empty building houses refugees from Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine, also under occupation. Dnipro’s Society for the Blind, which itself requires state assistance, has several dozen people from Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut staying on its premises. And in the previously bare windows of the city’s dilapidated Institute of Mineral Resources, you can see linen drying as trucks of humanitarian aid are unloaded.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/dnipro-peace-ukraine-russian-strike-apartment-45-dead/
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