Death toll rises after Russia’s deadliest attack on Kyiv for months

11 hours ago Share Save Joel Gunter BBC News, Kyiv Jessica Rawnsley BBC News, London Share Save

Russian drone strikes Kyiv tower block and other sites in capital hit overnight

Ukrainian emergency services have continued to recover bodies from under rubble in Kyiv after Russia hit the city with a huge missile and drone attack overnight into Tuesday. At least 28 people have been killed and more than 100 injured, officials said, as the death toll increased on Wednesday after having been revised several times, both upwards and downwards. There were also two fatalities in Odesa. As part of the strikes, a drone smashed into an apartment block destroying dozens of flats. The attack was among the biggest on the capital since the start of Russia’s full-scale war, with Ukraine’s interior minister saying the country had been hit by 440 drones and 32 missiles.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted Ukraine’s military-industrial complexes and that all its targets had been hit. The strikes on Kyiv lasted more than nine hours – sending residents fleeing to underground shelters from before midnight until after sunrise. Officials said a ballistic missile hit a nine-storey apartment building in the southwestern Solomyanskyi district – bodies continued to be recovered from the site on Wednesday. A total of 27 locations in the city came under fire, according to authorities. A 62-year-old US citizen was among those killed in Solomyanskyi, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said early on Tuesday. US State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce later confirmed the “tragic death” of an American citizen.

Reuters It is one of the largest bombardments of the capital since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion

Standing in front of the remains of the building, Klitschko said more than 40 apartments had been destroyed and more people might be trapped under the rubble. He accused Russia of firing cluster bomblets filled with ball bearings to kill as many people as possible. “Waking up in utter nightmare: people trapped under rubble and full buildings collapsed,” Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko wrote on X on Tuesday.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that a variety of buildings had come under Russian attack, including residential, critical infrastructure and educational facilities. People were still under the rubble by late afternoon on Tuesday and rescue work was going on at two sites, he said. Klymenko explained that initial mistakes made in counting the dead often happened because body parts were wrongly identified. Loud explosions rocked the city in the early hours of Tuesday, along with the rattle of the machine guns used by mobile Ukrainian air defence units to shoot down drones. More sirens later in the morning disrupted rescue operations in the city, hampering emergency workers searching the rubble for survivors. Russia has intensified its air attacks against Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, with a tactic of sending large waves of drones and decoys designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences. Kyiv has launched attacks of its own, as direct talks between the warring sides failed to secure a ceasefire or significant breakthrough. Russia accused Ukrainian forces of launching a missile strike on a district in occupied Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, and Russia-appointed officials said at least 10 people had been hurt. A reported 147 Ukrainian drones were shot down over nine Russian regions overnight, Russian news agencies said.

Reuters Kyiv was hit by a barrage of strikes overnight into Tuesday

The first trial of its kind: A Russian soldier takes the stand for an execution

4 days ago Share Save Joel Gunter Reporting from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine Share Save

BBC Dmitriy Kurashov is the first Russian soldier to stand trial in Ukraine for an alleged battlefield execution

On the frozen frontline in the east of Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian soldier surveyed the fallout from a Russian assault. It was the middle of January 2024 and the ground was covered in ice. Two weeks earlier, an 18-strong Russian assault team had broken through the line and seized three positions, killing five Ukrainians and losing 10 Russians before ceding the thin stretch of land back to the Ukrainians just hours later. The three positions that had changed hands were each just a few foxholes in the ground –⁠ dots on a devastated landscape of craters and shredded trees. The Ukrainian soldier filmed as he looked over the remains of his fallen comrades. “This is Vitas, the small one,” he said, using the dead man’s callsign. He examined another body. “A silver ring, this is Grinch,” he said. With difficulty, he turned over another frozen body. It was in bad condition, but the face was recognisable. The soldier sighed. “What can I find to cover you, so that you won’t get cold,” he said to the dead man. He picked up a nearby helmet and placed it over the damaged face. “We have found the Penguin,” he said. A year later, in January 2025, a Russian soldier was frog-marched down the corridor of a rundown local courthouse in Zaporizhzhia flanked by five Ukrainian soldiers and a large rottweiler trained on the Russian’s scent and straining at its leash to attack him. Dmitriy Kurashov, callsign ‘Stalker’, was about to go on trial for the alleged battlefield execution of Vitalii Hodniuk, a veteran 41-year-old Ukrainian soldier known by the callsign ‘Penguin’.

Handout Vitalii Hodniuk, a veteran Ukrainian soldier with the callsign ‘Penguin’, was killed on the frontline

The trial was to be the first of its kind. According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian troops have executed at least 124 prisoners of war on the battlefield since the full-scale invasion began, but Kurashov is the first person to be brought to trial in Ukraine for the crime. His case is one of a tiny number among the tens of thousands of open war crimes cases where a suspect has been captured and can be made to stand in the dock. Adding to the unprecedented nature of the event, three members of Kurashov’s own unit had agreed to testify against him. In the bright, boxy courtroom, Kurashov was locked in a glass-enclosed dock. Short in stature, his head often bowed, he cut a subdued figure. When he did look around, he was forced to swivel his head because he had lost one eye to a grenade at the front. It was not Kurashov’s first time in the dock; he had been jailed twice before in Russia, and was among the thousands of prisoners freed by the state to take part in the war. The prosecutor read the charges. Kurashov was accused of shooting Hodniuk execution style as the Ukrainian soldier attempted to surrender – a violation of the laws of war. Kurashov had intially pleaded not guilty, during the pre-trial phase, but now in court he switched his plea to guilty. Informally, he maintained his innocence, and was making the switch purely to speed up the process, he said. According to the UN, battlefield executions by Russians have increased at an alarming rate over the past year. In a February report, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said it had found evidence of 79 executions by Russian forces since August 2024, as well as evidence of three illegal killings by Ukraine using first-person drones. The UN also said it had found at least three calls by Russian public officials ordering or approving executions, and according to Ukraine there is evidence of Russian battlefield commanders ordering executions up and down the frontline.

Kurashov faces up to life in prison if found guilty

The assault on the front by Kurashov’s unit was to be his first proper operation, just a few weeks after joining the war. The unit was part of “Storm-V”, a detachment of the 127th motorised rifle division made up almost entirely of freed prisoners. The Storm-V units have been used by Russia as cannon fodder, sent to stage assaults on the worst parts of the frontline. They are a grim echo of similar units formed by Stalin, characterised principally by their extremely high rate of attrition. The operation began early on the morning of 6 January 2024 under a dense fog. The 18-strong Storm-V team approached the frontline in two armoured vehicles and a tank and the assault began. Kurashov was directed towards the small cluster of foxholes where Hodniuk and others were hiding, following a Russian artillery barrage. This is where Kurashov’s account diverges from that of the prosecution and the Russian soldiers testifying against him. They say Kurashov called into a foxhole for those inside to surrender and Hodniuk emerged unarmed and kneeled on the ground, only for Kurashov to shoot him with a burst from his AK-47. Kurashov says that it was not him who fired the shots but another Russian, a medic with callsign “Sedoy”, who was later killed. The Russians could not hold the position for long. Overpowered by Ukrainian forces just hours later, Kurashov and the other survivors crawled out of the foxholes and surrendered. They were marched away from the front to a Ukrainian armoured vehicle and taken as prisoners of war. Ukrainian soldiers who saw Hodniuk’s body told the country’s state security service, the SBU, that it lay face down with no weapon nearby.

The three frontline foxholes where Vitalii Hodniuk was killed, as seen by a Ukrainian drone filming shortly after the operation

The SBU could not access the scene, because it was too close to the contact line, but the agency began what would become an extensive remote investigation. At an SBU location in Zaporizhzhia last month, the officer in charge – who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his work in the security service – drew a map of the scene and explained how they put Kurashov in the dock. “The first step was interrogating the eight prisoners of war,” he said. “They were questioned as witnesses and later their identities were fully confirmed via social networks, mobile phones, and partial radio intercepts that preceded the event. The entire unit in that sector was tracked.” Initially, there were two suspected executions. Another Ukrainian, callsign ‘Grinch’, had been beaten to death with a shovel, one witness said. But the SBU couldn’t prove it. “The polygraph didn’t confirm the information and when the bodies were eventually recovered from the battlefield, none of them had such injuries,” the investigator said. “My opinion, after examining all the facts, is that this was made up.” It was, he said, an example of Ukraine’s ability to investigate and prosecute war crimes impartially, despite being the victim and under an ongoing state of war from the aggressor. “Look, we have one suspect on trial for an execution,” the SBU investigator said, referring to Kurashov. “I signed it and sent it to court because we’ve gathered enough evidence that points to guilt. If our goal was simply to suspect anyone and send them to court we would have ten prisoners passing through every day.”

With no specialist war crimes court in Ukraine, the trial is uncharted territory for the three judges

The seriousness with which Ukraine is treating this criminal prosecution is apparent. The SBU investigation produced more than 2,000 pages of evidence. Each of the witnesses was put through filmed reconstructions of the event on a Ukrainian army shooting range. In court, all efforts have been made by the prosecutor and the judges to ensure that Kurashov understands his rights, that he can understand his interpreter, and is given the opportunity to cross examine witnesses against him – an opportunity he has so far declined. (Kurashov’s state-appointed lawyer declined to speak to the BBC. She has spoken only briefly in court, on administrative matters and to clarify some descriptions of the event by witnesses.) The three Russian witnesses all testified on the first day of Kurashov’s trial – three former prisoners who like Kurashov had gambled on surviving the war to gain their freedom. One had been serving 25 years to life for killing two drug dealers, another nine years for grievous bodily harm for killing a man with a brick in a fight, a third eight years, also for grievous bodily harm.

They gave evidence via video link from an adjacent courtroom, so they could be locked in their own dock. Dmitry Zuev, 44, was to be the key witness. He told the court that he saw Kurashov call for the Ukrainians to come out of the foxhole and surrender, after which Hodniuk emerged and knelt with his hands up. Then there were more gunshots and explosions, Zuev said, and he saw Hodniuk fall face down into the mud. Zuev also told the court that he personally knew the medic, Sedoy, who Kurashov has accused of the killing, and Sedoy was not there. Oleg Zamyatin, 54, testified that Hodniuk was not holding a gun when he emerged from the foxhole. Zamyatin did not see Kurashov fire the alleged shots, he said, because there were explosions at the same moment. “But I can say that it was him,” Zamyatin told the court. “Because there was no one else at that spot except him.” Konstantin Zelenin, 41, the commander of Kurashov’s small assault group, told the court he was hiding in a crater when he saw Hodniuk exit the foxhole on the right side with his hands up. “Then, just a split second later, as the shelling began again, I heard a burst from an automatic rifle,” Zelenin said. “On the right side was Stalker, and he was there alone.”

Kurashov told the BBC he was told “not to take prisoners”

In the dock, Kurashov sat largely mute as his former unit mates testified against him, speaking only occasionally to his lawyer through a slim gap in the enclosure’s door. It is not clear yet if he will testify on his own behalf. The day after one of his hearings, he agreed to talk to the BBC about how he had ended up on trial in Ukraine. The interview was co-ordinated by the SBU and conducted at a derelict building in Zaporizhzhia being used as a kind of safe house by the service, which confirmed the basic facts of Kurashov’s life. Kurashov appeared in good condition and said he had agreed freely to take part. The lead judge in his case permitted the interview, for which an SBU press officer was present some of the time. Kurashov’s remarks to the BBC will not be admissible in court. His journey to that miserable stretch of front where Hodniuk died – to becoming Stalker – began in an orphanage in Gremyachinsk, a decayed old coal town about a thousand miles from Moscow on the way to Siberia. Orphaned at birth, Kurashov was raised in a group home. As a teenager, he got into a fight with a police officer and was imprisoned for assault. He served four years, but on his release he had no family, friends or place to live, so he became a vagrant. He began robbing summer houses and shops for food and money, he said, resulting in another imprisonment, this time in a remote penal colony alongside men serving life sentences for some of the most brutal crimes. Six months into that sentence, representatives from the Russian military came to the penal colony and told the convicts they had an opportunity to turn a new page in their lives. Kurashov still had five years to serve. “They told us you can have a clean slate, become a clean person,” he said. “Just sign this contract and go.” “Go” meant to the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Kurashov knew little about it, he said, but he thought anything was better than five more years in the penal colony or being turned out into the streets at the end of his sentence. So he signed, and was taken immediately to a training camp in occupied territory in Ukraine.

A drone view of the area of the frontline assaulted by Kurashov and his unit, in the eastern oblast of Zaporizhzhia

Kurashov described his unit as made up entirely of “people who had been pushed down by life and rejected by society, who were outside of society”. They were given 21 days’ training, he said, during which they were drunk almost all the time. “They did not want to study or train,” he recalled. “They all said they were just there to die.” There was no training on the Geneva Convention, to which Russia and Ukraine are both signatories, and which prohibits the killing of people who have surrendered or no longer pose a threat. In fact, the trainers told them the opposite, Kurashov said. “The ones who taught us how to take positions told us not to take any prisoners,” he said. His description matches accounts from his unit mates, who told Ukrainian investigators they were instructed to execute prisoners and throw grenades into dugouts even if the enemy had surrendered. It also matches accounts from other Russian prisoners of war. “I don’t recall training on international humanitarian law,” a Russian POW told the UN recently. “During our military training and later, commanders told us not to take [Ukrainian soldiers] as prisoners of war. It is logistically cumbersome.” According to Kurashov, the unit were told they would be carrying out logistical operations like digging trenches, but instead found themselves headed immediately for battle. During the brief assault on the Ukrainian position, Kurashov’s impression was not one of an able military unit at war. “What I saw was people who just laid down and died,” he said. Within hours, 10 of the 18-strong assault team were dead and the remaining eight were in captivity. Within a fortnight, the incident had become one of Ukraine’s many thousands of war crimes cases. Ukraine has no specialist war crimes courts, so the cases generally fall to whichever court is local to the offence. In this case, the Zavodskyi District in Zaporizhzhia.

Mykyta Manevskyi is prosecuting his first execution case

Prior to the full scale invasion, 32-year-old prosecutor Mykyta Manevskyi had taken on a range of civil crimes like robbery, vandalism and fraud, plus two murder cases, but never a war crime. “When you’re working with an ordinary murder case, it has difficulties but it’s pretty simple,” Manevskyi said. “You know where the murder took place, you can collect DNA and fingerprints, you can find the murder weapon. You have almost immediate access to the body. You can conduct forensic tests.” In this case, Manevskyi’s murder scene was on the contact line. “We could not even extract the body for two months,” he said. “It made it difficult to perform any kind of forensic examination. The body was too long under the sun, the rain and snow, and it was harmed by artillery strikes.” That made it difficult to ascertain anything concrete about the nature of the shots that killed Hodniuk. “This is not the level of detail, unfortunately, that we need when investigating a murder,” Manevskyi said. “So we had to focus more on working with the witnesses we had.” In fact, the prosecution is relying almost totally on the testimony of the Russian soldiers. There are no other eyewitnesses, no drone footage of the actual event and the physical evidence is circumstantial, much of it badly degraded by the battlefield conditions which persisted for weeks before the bodies could be recovered.

War crimes are being tried at ordinary local courts like the Zavodskyi District Courthouse, where Kurashov’s case is being heard

But the testimony is not without its complications. The witnesses are all POWs, being held by the nation prosecuting the case. They were each interrogated up to 10 times by the Ukrainian state security service, during which time some of their stories evolved. One bore a grudge against Kurashov from their time together in training, he told investigators. Another said he resented the defendant for, in his view, getting them caught. “It is a tricky area,” said Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University of the Netherlands. “POWs are a particularly vulnerable category of witnesses, any evidence they give should be taken with a grain of salt.” There was nothing inherently wrong with POWs testifying, Vasiliev said, but various factors could have affected their decision to appear for the prosecution. “Maybe they are expecting better treatment in Ukrainian custody, maybe they expect to be prioritised in a prisoner swap,” he said. “They could have various incentives to lie.” Kurashov maintains his story about the medic, Sedoy. He told the BBC he had pleaded guilty because he believed the sooner the trial was over the sooner he could be exchanged back to Russia. But if Kurashov is found guilty, he is no longer a prisoner of war. He is simply a prisoner in Ukraine’s civil legal system. Yuriy Belousov, the head of the war crimes department of Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General, told the BBC that Russian soldiers convicted of war crimes would go to prison in Ukraine and stay there. “We prosecute on behalf of the victims and their relatives and they should feel justice has been done,” Belousov said. In the end, it may not be that simple. Russia has captured many thousands of civilians during its full scale invasion of Ukraine and is effectively holding them hostage in Russian prisons. If the Kremlin decides it wants Kurashov back, it may have leverage to get him. “That is less of a legal and more of an ethical issue,” Belousov said. “If, let’s say, 100 people would be offered to exchange for this one, then yes maybe. It is our obligation to prosecute on behalf of victims, but it is also our obligation to save our people who have been kept in Russia.”

Three of Dmitriy Kurashov’s former unit mates testified against him

Belousov and his colleagues are aiming at bigger fish than Kurashov. Their goal for this year and next is to bring cases against middle and higher level Russian command, he said. According to the testimony from the captured Russians in Kurashov’s unit, their senior commander issued an order directly before the assault that no prisoners should be taken. According to Belousov, similar evidence has been found up and down the frontline. Grim video evidence, sometimes shared on Russian social media, appears to bear that out. Russia has in turn accused Ukrainian troops of extra-judicial killings, and Ukraine has launched several investigations into its own forces (the exact number is unclear). But the number of allegations against Russia far outweighs that against Ukraine. Russia has previously denied committing war crimes in the conflict. The UN has also documented several cases of Russian public figures calling for executions. Last July, after Ukraine’s Azov Brigade posted a social media video showing one of its members shooting a Russian soldier in a dugout, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, called for “total executions” of Ukrainian servicemen. “No words about mercy. No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to life. Execute, execute and execute,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram social media platform. Medvedev’s words will not cost him anything. Instead they run downhill until they reach the level of Vitalii Hodniuk, Dmitry Kurashov, and all the other Russian and Ukrainian men killing each other in service of the war’s obscure goals. In this case, one of those men stands accused of breaking the laws of the killing he had been sent to do – laws he may well have been ordered to disregard. If found guilty, Kurashov faces up to life in prison. At the end of his conversation with the BBC, he said that he had no real vision for the future, other than a desire to return to Russia. “At least I will have a disability,” he said, referring to the loss of his eye, and the anticipated benefits it would draw. “I won’t have to be a vagrant anymore.” Vitalii Hodniuk cannot return home, of course. It was two months before his body could even be recovered. His family did not want to speak publicly about his passing, but they did assist in the SBU in its investigation. Hodniuk’s record shows that he was an experienced soldier who defended Ukraine against Russian-backed forces from 2015 to 2020 and joined up to fight again in 2022. Last May, six months after he died, the Penguin was brought back to his village to be buried. On a bright morning, just a stone’s throw from where he grew up and went to school, people lined the street on their knees to watch his coffin pass by. Kurashov’s trial continues.

At least four dead in Russian strike on Kyiv days after Putin vowed revenge for Ukrainian attack on Kremlin bombers

People look at a residential multi-storey building damaged after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

By Henry Moore

Russian attacks on Kyiv overnight have killed at least four people and injured 20 more.

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The Kremlin launched a wave of drone strikes on Ukraine’s capital late on Thursday night, forcing residents to flee underground to shelter.

Elsewhere, Vladimir Putin’s forces fired at least 15 drones and six missiles at the northwestern city of Lutsk, injuring five people.

This wave of Russian strikes comes after Putin vowed to respond to Ukraine’s unprecedented attack on Kremlin bombers last week.

Read more: Elon Musk dares Trump to ‘make my day’ as feud escalates with explosive claim: ‘He’s in the Epstein files’

Aerial defences being activated in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, during an airstrike. Picture: Alamy

On Thursday, Russia killed at least six people, including a baby, in strikes on the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky.

The deadly attack came just hours after President Donald Trump shared a phone call with Putin, where the Russian leader vowed to take revenge for Ukraine’s recent attack on a Kremlin military base.

According to Trump, Putin told him that Russia would respond “very strongly” to a Ukrainian attack on its airfields over the weekend.

Ukraine targeted more than 40 stationary Russian bomber planes in a large-scale drone attack, which Zelenskyy celebrated as an ‘absolutely brilliant result’.

An explosion eas seen after the Russian air strike on Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

People rest in a metro station, being used as a bomb shelter, during a Russian drones attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Friday, June 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov). Picture: AP Photo/Dan Bashakov

117 drones were smuggled inside special containers on trucks before they were flown out of them, according to a Ukrainian government source.

The attack is understood to be a major breach of Russia’s natural defences, and will degrade the Russian military’s ability to strike Ukraine with missiles.

A man carries his dog in front of the residential multi-storey building damaged. Picture: AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

The damage done by the drone. Picture: Alamy

The US president warned in a social media post that Putin would respond to the attack.

He wrote: “it was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace.”

It was Trump’s first known call with Putin in over two weeks, since their call on May 19 which Trump described as ‘excellent’ at the time.

But Trump appears no closer to achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine, something he promised to do ‘on day one’ of his second term in the White House, during his presidential campaign.

After a night of terror in Kyiv, the search for dead goes on

2 hours ago Share Save Joel Gunter Reporting from Kyiv Share Save

BBC Oleksandr Bondarchuk was unable to make it to a shelter when the strikes hit Kyiv. “It was terrible,” he said. “Everything was destroyed.”

Evhen Povarenkov was standing at a line of police tape that separated the public from the intensive search and rescue operation around his building. He stared up at what was left of his apartment, in a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. His windows had disappeared, his balcony was on the verge of collapse. Below, personal belongings were strewn across the pathways. Bedsheets and towels hung from the branches of trees. A cruise missile slammed into this ordinary residential block in the Solomianskyi neighbourhood in the early hours of Tuesday morning, likely travelling at about 500mph. The blast destroyed 35 apartments and hollowed out an entire section of the building. By Wednesday afternoon, 23 people had been found dead in the rubble. Across Ukraine, at least 30 were known to have been killed in the attacks, all but two of them in Kyiv. The air strike on Povarenkov’s building was just one of a huge wave sent by Russia – a total of more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said. The barrage smashed the capital for nine hours, from midnight until well past dawn. It was among the worst attacks on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

A cruise missile destroyed an entire section of a nine-storey residential building in Kyiv. Flowers were laid by mourners in the playground beneath.

Povarenkov, a 43-year-old warehouse worker, looked down from his wrecked apartment. His face was cut and grazed all over and one of his eyes was severely bloodshot. He could not see out of it. He was in bed when the missile hit, he said. His elderly mother was asleep in the next room. “There was heat, fire, and smoke,” he said, recalling the huge impact just metres from his wall. “I lost consciousness. When I came to, I heard my mother screaming.” Neighbours helped Povarenkov knock out his warped door and get his mother of the apartment. Other survivors were emerging into the remains of the shattered building. “People were screaming, children were crying,” said pensioner Arcadiy Volenchuk, 60. “It was total chaos.” Outside, the residents tried to find a safe route through burning cars and falling debris. “Everything was on fire,” said Alla, 69, a teacher. “The fuel tanks in the cars were exploding. Broken glass was pouring from above, along with pieces of concrete and tiles.” Povarenkov’s mother was rushed to intensive care, he said, with two broken collarbones, cuts to both her eyes and severe damage to her internal organs that required surgery.

Neighbours helped Evhen Povarenkov get his mother out of their apartment

She was one of more than 100 wounded in the city. At around midnight, Serhii Dubrov, anesthesiologist and director of the 12th Kyiv City Clinical Hospital, felt the strikes begin. Within hours, his hospital alone would receive 27 patients, he said. “They had soft tissue injuries, lacerations from broken glass, damage to blood vessels. There were traumatic brain injuries and internal chest injuries. One had a severed femoral artery – we were able to repair it. The worst was a woman with open head injury. “These are the kinds of injuries we see from these kinds of attacks.” The patients at Dr Dubrov’s hospital ranged from 18 to 95, he said. Three were in their 90s. Strikes like these, on residential buildings, can be particularly dangerous for the elderly and infirm, who cannot easily dash to an underground shelter. Oleksandr Bondarchuk, a 64-year-old disabled man whose apartment was also close to the impact point, could not make it to the shelter. He lay in bed terrified throughout, he said. An hour after the attack, Bondarchuk was able to slowly make his way downstairs. “It was terrible,” he said. “Everything was destroyed.” Some of those whose apartments were severely damaged were able to find shelter with friends or relatives. Others were not so fortunate. “This is all I have,” Bondarchuk said.

Rescue workers were still discovering new bodies under the rubble on Wednesday afternoon.

Why Ukraine is one of the world’s most digital countries

2 days ago Share Save Ben Morris Technology of Business Editor Share Save

Getty Images Ukrainians can access 130 services from the Diia portal

Rounding a corner in Kyiv on 24 Feb 2022, Oleksandr Bornyakov remembers driving into a gun battle. It was day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Russian saboteurs were fighting with Ukrainian security forces in the centre of the Ukrainian capital. “There is shooting, cars are burning, armoured vehicles are burning… when we eventually passed… there were a lot of bodies.” As a government minister he had been ordered to drive hundreds of kilometres west and continue his work in a safer location.

Beginning in 2019, Bornykov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, had been managing the shift of Ukraine’s government services to a new app called Diia (the Ukrainian word for action). The idea was that citizens could access everything they needed from their mobile phones; driving licences, marriage certificates, house deeds, and much more. They started with driver’s licences in 2019, which was quite popular, but the Diia app got a boost during the pandemic, when Covid certificates were added. “This gave another maybe two or three million people,” says Bornykov. Despite the war Diia has continued to develop. Today the app hosts 40 government services, including tax payment, car registration and marriage applications. Perhaps more fun – Ukrainians can make local selections for Eurovision via the app, including selecting national jury members and choosing the national representative. Additionally, 30 documents are available on the app; Bornykov, flicked through some of his for me including his gun licence and car insurance. There is also a Diia portal, which can be accessed via a browser on a computer, which has 130 services for citizens and businesses. In total Diia has 22.7 million users. All this, according to Bornyakov, makes Ukraine one of the leading countries when it comes to digital government services – in his opinion putting Ukraine ahead of Estonia, which is well known for its digital government. “I haven’t seen anybody else doing better than us, except maybe Saudi Arabia, and this both relates to number of users and and the approach.”

Ministry of Digital Transformation Ukraine Marriage admin can all be done via the Diia app

How has Ukraine been able to make such progress, despite the disruption of Covid and amid, for the last three years, fighting off Russian invaders? Part of it is having the right workforce, according to Bornyakov. He says that for the past 20 years Ukraine has been a popular destination for companies looking to outsource IT projects. He estimates that there are 300,000 software developers in Ukraine, many of whom have worked on complex projects for big international companies. “There’s a lot of technical and experienced engineers that can do brilliant things,” he says. They are also not as expensive as elsewhere in the world. So, he estimates that between five and 10 million dollars was spent on developing Diia. Hiring software developers in the UK would cost five or 10 times as much, he says.

Getty Images The Diia app was used to select Ukraine’s Eurovision act, Ziferblat

David Eaves is associate professor of digital government at University College London, and has studied efforts by governments all over the world to digitise their services. He says the key to Ukraine’s success was work done prior to building the app. Using software similar to that used by Estonia, Ukraine created a data exchange, which made it easy for data flow from government departments and organisations. The Diia app was then added on top of the data exchange. “If you have this flexibility of moving data around, it becomes much easier to build new services, because rather than asking citizens for the same information all over again, you can simply request their permission to access it,” says Prof Eaves. So, when applying for a benefit, users don’t have to re-enter their address, place of birth, martial status, and their income could be checked against their tax records. Not only does this reduce the administrative burden, but it means the government doesn’t have to design a system to recollect, store and process this information all over again.

Ministry for Digital Transformation Ukraine The Diia app hosts 40 government services and 30 documents

That flexibility allowed Ukraine to add new services to cope with the challenges of war. “We actually introduced around 15 different services related to the to the war,” says Mr Bornyakov. For example users could apply for compensation if their property was damaged or destroyed. Citizens could also report the location of Russian troops through the app. Prof Eaves also points out that Ukraine’s war with Russia has spurred government to modernise. “When you are on a wartime footing, there’s a sense of urgency. The urgency of delivering the service becomes more important than rules that sometimes trip up bureaucracies,” he says. That’s put Ukraine among the countries leading the effort to digitise government services, according to Prof Eaves. He thinks Denmark is probably leading the way with both a solid infrastructure, range of services and well designed user interface.