Standing near the ruined apartment building, Poltava resident Vladyslav Leshchenko attributed the lucky escape from the carnage he and his family had to air alert notifications he received on his phone, telling independent Poltava-based media outlet ZMIST that he had been woken up before dawn on Saturday by urgent warnings of an incoming airstrike and had immediately taken his wife and child to a bomb shelter in the school building next door.

“We were in the shelter when the building was struck. We called our neighbours on the third and fifth floors … but they didn’t pick up. We still don’t know what happened to them.” Leshchenko said, adding that though he knew their apartment had been destroyed, he couldn’t bear to look at the ruins and was concentrating instead on the fact that he and his family had survived. “God protects the careful. Today it saved our lives.”

The shock wave from the impact caused windows in some 18 high-rise buildings to shatter, with local residents left to clear up the mess and then cover the empty window frames with tarpaulin in an attempt not to freeze.

“My daughter called and said that the glass in the windows had shattered and the shards had fallen into the cots where her children were sleeping below. We went to clean everything up and secure the windows as there’s no heating at present — it was switched off alongside the power supply after the attack.”

“We live near here too and were thrown into the air by the shockwave. The explosion was very strong’, Poltava resident Yelena, whose daughter and grandchildren live near the impact site, told journalists.

Poltava resident Asya Brel told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne that her leg had been cut by falling shards of glass from the broken window panes in her flat, though the wound was already stitched up in hospital: “The windows in the kitchen flew out, the fridge was blown right into the corridor. The children were with their grandmother in the other room, we are all alive.”

“The first clap was, as I understood it, the Shahed drone being shot down. It was heard once, twice, three times, and then after about 15 minutes there was a very strong explosion, and everyone ran out into the street,” local resident Vladimir Gusanov said.

A Gazeta.ua correspondent spoke to a man at the scene of the attack who was looking for his wife, who hadn’t been seen since the attack, though she had been at home in their flat on the fifth floor of the building. “I was on the night shift. I got a call and was told that our house had been struck. I came here and this is what I saw. My wife was home alone ... Now neither she nor the flat are anywhere to be seen.”

“I was fast asleep and then I was suddenly thrown with such force into the air that I almost hit the ceiling. For about 20 seconds I was totally frozen in horror. There was a lot of smoke, and people were screaming in the street. It was so terrifying that no horror film could do it justice,” Oleh, 31, whose apartment is in a neighbouring building, told a journalist from Gazeta.ua.

More than 460 first respondents were working at the scene of the attack all day on Saturday, and psychologists provided by the Emergency Situations Ministry and the National Police provided 114 people with counselling.

“Tonight, Russia launched an attack against our cities, using various types of weapons: missiles, strike drones, aerial bombs. Another terrorist crime. In Poltava, a residential building was hit, the entrance was completely destroyed,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.

“Every such terrorist act proves that we need more support in protecting against Russian terror. Every air defence system, every anti-missile is a life-saving measure. It is very important that partners act, fulfil our agreements, and increase pressure on Russia,” the Ukrainian president continued.

Starting on Sunday, a three-day region-wide period of mourning to honour the victims of the Poltava attack has been declared.