“God loves me”: Kyiv man shares story of how Russian missile landed 50 metres from him
Pravda Ukraine
Yan Dobronosov, a photojournalist from Kyiv, ended up just 50 metres away from a site hit by a Russian missile and miraculously walked away unharmed.
Yan told Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia that after the 2 January Russian attack, he had rushed to the site of the missile strike to record Russia’s crimes on video.
Yan left his car in Kyiv’s Obolonskyi district and walked to the scene. At that moment, air defences fired twice.
“A minute later, I saw the missile fall on the territory of a plant where smoke was already rising from a previous hit. It was literally 50 metres away from me. I was lucky in that there must have been a foundation dug behind the fence, because the missile fell down there and exploded. I couldn’t move for five minutes as stones, debris and shards of window glass were flying around me,” said Yan.
Initially, Yan thought the debris had injured his body, but he felt no pain because of the adrenaline rush in his blood. He walked away unharmed.
The photographer waited for firefighters to arrive at the scene, finished his work, and headed to another spot that the Russians had hit.
“I’m exhausted, but in one piece,” he said.
Yan added that this was the first time during the full-scale war that he had been so close to the epicentre of an explosion, and he considers it an absolute miracle that he remained unharmed.
“God loves me, but I mustn’t take advantage of that,” Yan noted on social media.
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Background:
- On the night of 2 January, Russia launched 99 missiles of various types towards Ukraine, 72 of which were destroyed.
- Missile wreckage crashed in Kyiv’s Pecherskyi, Obolonskyi, Holosiivskyi and Sviatoshynskyi districts, and a civilian infrastructure facility in Podilskyi district was hit.
- Three people were killed in the large-scale missile attack on Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, including Liudmyla Shevtsova, a teacher at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Forty-three more people were injured, 37 of them hospitalised.
- The National Police of Ukraine posted a video featuring the first few minutes after the Russian attack on Kyiv.
Learn more: Baby born in hospital shelter during Russian missile attack on Kyiv Oblast
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