After one of Russia’s deadliest attacks, Kyiv residents lose hope for help

Kyiv, Ukraine – Several framed photos connected the yellowish crushed drown amid bouquets of wilting flowers nether a wind-shaken portion of reddish tape.

Above them are towering rectangles of damaged factual – remnants of a blast-gutted flat building.

Sasha Paremsky, 11, stood successful beforehand of the scene, softly describing a lad successful 1 of the photos.

“The scariest happening is to spot my friend’s photograph there. We’d conscionable met to play shot earlier … this,” helium told Al Jazeera with a pause.

“This” was the Russian rocket onslaught that killed 32 people, including 5 children, and wounded much than 150 connected July 31. More than a twelve of those injured were children.

The Kremlin said the onslaught targeted “military factories, a subject airstrip’s infrastructure and an ammunition depot”.

In reality, an Iskander ballistic rocket deed the nine-storey flat gathering adjacent to the Paremsky household location successful this rustically quiescent neighbourhood that has nary factories, subject bases oregon sites, and sits much than 10km (6 miles) westbound of cardinal Kyiv.

A makeshift memorial for the victims of the July 31, 2025, rocket onslaught [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]

“People cried for assistance from nether the debris. Everything was connected fire,” Paremsky said, recalling the hours aft the attack. He and his parents helped survivors and rescue workers excavation up the wounded and the dead.

Witnesses described the strike’s dependable arsenic a snake-like hiss that evolved into an eardrum-popping boom.

“I perceive the hissing, and 1 infinitesimal later, I americium thrown distant from the window” by the shockwave, said Hanna, a survivor.

Among the dormant were 23-year-old Mykyta and Sofia Lamekhovs and their two-year-old lad Lev, who had fled Sloviansk, the archetypal Ukrainian municipality that was concisely seized by Moscow-backed separatists successful 2014 and is adjacent to the beforehand enactment again.

“They were specified a beauteous couple, I saw them the time before,” 1 of the neighbours sighed. “She had conscionable gotten pregnant.”

Just 1 of the galore families killed oregon destroyed different by the state rocket strikes connected Kyiv connected July 31 conscionable due to the fact that they were Ukrainians.

Could person been immoderate of you. pic.twitter.com/wazFzVDbtp

— Olga Klymenko (@OlgaK2013) August 2, 2025

The onslaught was the second-deadliest wartime battle successful Kyiv. A rocket and drone onslaught successful July 2024 killed 33 people, including 5 children, and damaged Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.

The caller onslaught was the horrifying pinnacle of months-long, astir nightly pummelling of Kyiv and different Ukrainian cities.

Each progressive hundreds of drones and dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles – and followed the Kremlin’s daytime assurances of its readiness to commencement bid talks, but with a database of conditions that looked similar a capitulation demand.

Plastic movie replaced windows damaged by the July 31 onslaught [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]

And yet, for galore survivors, the astir dreadful aftermath is not Moscow’s narratives oregon United States President Donald Trump’s indecisiveness towards harsher sanctions connected Russia.

It is losing anticipation for help.

“So, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy was here. And [Kyiv politician Vitali] Klitschko. They each said we’d get help. And present were are, with nary windows, nary subsidies, nothing,” Tamara, a resident, told Al Jazeera.

Most residents covered their windows, gouged retired by the blast, with integrative movie due to the fact that the one-time subsidy outgo of 10,000 hryvnia ($241) hardly covers the outgo of a azygous integrative window.

Hanna claimed that erstwhile she was trying to person the subsidy, a metropolis authoritative told her she had not been listed successful the authoritative registry of tenants.

To get registered, she would request the assistance of a “firm” that would complaint her 10,000 hryvnia ($241) to get the occupation done wrong a time oregon two, she claimed to person heard from the official.

Such “firms” often enactment adjacent to authorities offices and correspond “hidden corruption,” according to experts.

But successful this case, the complaint seems overtly high.

“It’s precise unusual that, according to the resident, the outgo of the subsidy is adjacent to the outgo of assistance,” Serhii Mitkalyk, caput of the Anti-Corruption Headquarters, a nongovernmental radical successful Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

Cars damaged by Russian drones during the July 31 attacks [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]

A earthy state tube that leaked aft the blast has been unopen off, leaving residents with nary substance for their stoves. Locals accused authorities of refusing to supply a discount for the energy they present person to usage for cooking.

“We are near unsocial to bash everything by ourselves with nary help,” Hanna said.

District and metropolis administrations person not commented connected the residents’ claims, asking for written requests that stay unanswered.

Al Jazeera has previously reported connected years-long delays successful the reconstruction of war-damaged flat buildings and houses.

There are precocious “corruption risks” during the existent renovation of damaged buildings.

“The biggest abuses are seen during centralised procurement [of operation materials] for reconstruction,” anticorruption adept Mitkalyk said.

“Our organisation monitors specified tenders and identifies cases wherever prices for operation materials are inflated by 20–30 percent compared to marketplace prices,” helium said.

“Some of these cases person already go the taxable of transgression proceedings and tribunal rulings, but successful general, this is the accustomed enactment of instrumentality enforcement agencies successful the tract of recovery,” helium said.

And then, determination is the sheer size of the problem.

Some 60 cardinal quadrate metres (646 cardinal quadrate feet) of lodging person been destroyed since 2022, and astatine slightest $86bn is needed to rebuild them, authorities said earlier this year.

About 4.6 cardinal Ukrainians are internally displaced, and immoderate 600,000 are registered to get caller housing.

In May, the authorities reported that immoderate 100,000 Ukrainian families person utilized eVidnodlennya (eRestoration), a programme to compensate the nonaccomplishment of damaged oregon destroyed existent estate.

One tin usage their smartphone to use for a subsidy, upload documents and get a wealth transportation – oregon spell to a authorities bureau successful person.

Residents respond aft the Russian attacks connected the Ukrainian superior connected July 31, 2025 [Thomas Peter/Reuters]

However, astir a 4th – 24 percent – of applicants could not get them due to the fact that of bureaucratic problems, Olena Shulyak, caput of the ruling Servant of the People enactment said connected August 1.

Some had nary smartphones, others lacked documents, and galore cannot get to authorities offices from areas adjacent the beforehand line, she said.

But the astir susceptible radical of stateless Ukrainians – those from Russia-occupied areas that marque up immoderate 19 percent of Ukraine’s territory – cannot usage the programme due to the fact that officials are incapable to inspect their damaged oregon destroyed property.

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s little location of parliament, voted successful a instrumentality that simplifies the process successful December, but Zelenskyy has not signed it yet.

“No existent exile who mislaid everything successful occupied areas got a azygous penny of this money,” Petro Andriushchenko, erstwhile politician of Russia-occupied southeastern metropolis of Mariupol, wrote connected Telegram successful May. “The lives of existent internally displaced persons person not improved a bit. Not astatine all. All of this is the large authorities scam.”