““He flew right into her window.” The story of 14-year-old Maria from Kyiv, who was killed by a Russian drone November 13, 16:04 Share: Maria was only 14 years old when she was killed by a Russian drone (Photo: Facebook/Maria Troyanivska) Maria Troyanivska came home early on the evening when the Russian the drone hit her bedroom. The story of a 14-year-old girl who died as a result of the Russian attack on Kyiv is being told”, — write on: ua.news
“He flew right into her window.” The story of 14-year-old Maria from Kyiv, who was killed by a Russian drone Maria was only 14 years old when she was killed by a Russian drone (Photo: Facebook/Maria Troyanivska)
Maria Troyanivska came home early that evening when a Russian drone hit her bedroom. BBC journalists James Waterhouse and Toby Luckhurst tell the story of a 14-year-old girl who died as a result of the Russian attack on Kyiv. NV publishes material within the framework of an information partnership.
“He flew right into her window, right into her room,” her mother Victoria told the BBC. Immediately after the explosion, she and her husband Volodymyr ran out of the next room and saw that their daughter’s room was on fire.
“We tried to put out the fire, but everything was burning very badly, she says through tears. “It was impossible to breathe, and we had to leave the apartment.”
Russian last month “Shahed” killed a 14-year-old girl in her own bed in her apartment in one of the districts of Kyiv.
“She died instantly and then was burned, her mother said. – We had to bury her in a closed coffin. She had no chance to escape.”
Russia is massively increasing drone strikes in Ukraine. According to the General Staff, more than two thousand of them were launched in October – a record number in this war.
The same report says Russia launched 1,410 drones in September and 818 in August. For the entire three-month period before that, there were approximately 1,100 of them.
This is part of a wider activation of Russian forces. The Russians are advancing along the entire front line. North Korean troops entered the war on the side of Moscow. And after the election of Donald Trump as US president for a second term, the depleted and war-weary Defense Forces of Ukraine are facing uncertain support from their largest military donor.
Most of the Russian drones swarming Ukraine are Shaheds, developed in Iran: propeller-driven, with a distinctive wing shape and a deadly warhead in the nose.
Russia has also begun launching fake drones to confuse Ukrainian air defense units and force them to waste ammunition.
Unlike missiles, drones are much cheaper to produce, easier to launch, and designed to undermine morale.
Every evening, Ukrainians go to bed to the alarm signals on their phones, and drones cross the border at this time and provoke these sirens.
Every morning they wake up to news of another attack. Only since the beginning of November, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia have been affected by drones.
On November 10, Russia released 145 drones to Ukraine. According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, this is a record number in one day since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Kyiv said that day that it managed to shoot down 62 drones, and that there were 67 more “lost”, that is, they were either shot down by EW devices, or they disappeared from the radar screens.
Ukrainian air defense can hardly cope with such rapid quantities.
“We are still fighting back. I hope that we will continue to fight back,” Sergeant Mykhailo Shamanov, spokesman for the Kyiv City Military Administration, told the BBC.
According to him, Russia is trying to hit military facilities, but “the general goal is the terror of the civilian population.”
The Russians will continue to increase these attacks, Shamanov says, and that is why the government is constantly asking its Western allies to strengthen air defense.
And this is another reason why Ukraine is anxiously waiting to see what approach to war the newly elected US President Trump will have when he takes office again.
“No matter how well the forces and means of air defense work, one way or another, fragments of missiles and drones fall on the city and cause fires, destruction and, unfortunately, sometimes victims,” Mykhailo Shamanov explained.
“Every night it’s a lottery: where it will fly, where it will be shot down, where it will fall and what will happen.”
Vitaly and his mobile fire group do not have a permanent post – their weapons for destroying Shaheds are transported on the back of a flatbed truck, which allows them to quickly maneuver.
“We are trying to monitor, move, detect the drone in advance, hit it,” he said.
It is clear that the work is becoming more and more difficult.
“If six months ago there were 50 drones a month, now the figure has grown to 100 drones overnight,” he said.
Their work shifts are also getting longer. According to the commander of the fire group, when the Russians bombed Ukraine mostly with missiles, the air alert lasted for about six hours. “Now it’s 12-13 hours,” he said.
Vitaly is confident of his men and claims that they will be able to handle anything the Russians can throw at them if they receive weapons from the Western allies. “Our guys can handle 250 drones [за ніч]”, he said.
But the possibilities of air defense are limited. Ukrainians will continue to suffer until Russia stops its invasion and air attacks on cities.
Victoria says that now their life is divided into before and after the death of their daughter. After the destruction of their apartment, she lives with friends with her husband and younger son. At night, they sleep in the corridor to hide from the constant drone attacks.
““Of course it’s exhausting,” she says. — But it seems to me that this makes people even more angry, annoyed and indignant. Because they really don’t understand, especially lately, these attacks that hit peaceful homes.”
“I don’t understand at all why this war started and for what purpose, – Maria’s father Volodymyr told the BBC. – What is its meaning? Neither from an economic point of view, nor from a human point of view, nor from a territorial point of view – people just die.”
“It’s just the ambitions of sick people.”
Hanna Chornous and Anastasia Levchenko took part in the preparation of the material