Shortly after 8 a.m. Monday (0500 GMT), two strikes hit this wealthy neighborhood, less than a minute apart, and 300 m apart.
In the street that runs along the park, the windows of the buildings were shattered. Pieces of glass litter the floor. The blast of the explosion unsealed the door of a restaurant. Employees are already busy sweeping up the debris.
At a corner of the park, the first strike hit a crossroads, very close to a white three-storey administrative building, whose windows were also blown out.
The missile cratered the road, kicking up the asphalt. Several cars parked nearby are nothing but twisted, blackened hulks.
An AFP reporter saw a body completely covered in a thermal blanket.
– Death in an instant –
A pipe was hit. Like a stream, the water rushes down the street that leads to the main artery of the city center.
Sitting on a bench below the park, Ivan Poliakov is still livid. The 22-year-old struggles to express himself.
“I am very shocked. I arrived in kyiv this morning. I was walking in the street… when there were the explosions,” he told AFP.
“I saw children and women crying. I love kyiv, the people are good, they are brave. But in an instant… It’s death.”
Ksenia Riazantseva and her husband live in the street that runs along the park, on the courtyard side, just opposite the children’s playground.
“We were sleeping and we heard the first explosion” at the crossroads, she told AFP.
“We woke up and went to check, then the second explosion happened (in the park). We didn’t understand what had happened,” she continues.
“We saw the smoke, then the cars, and we realized that we no longer had a window. Fortunately, we live on the courtyard side”, adds this 39-year-old teacher.
“There is a university, two museums, there is no military target or the like. They just kill civilians,” she concludes angrily.
Asked about her feelings after the attack, the first since June 26 on the capital, she replied: “Well, we are at war!”.
For Serguii Agapov, a man who was busy repainting the frame of a bust on the wall of a building opposite the park, no doubt the strikes are retaliation after the explosion Saturday on the Crimean bridge.
“After the Crimean Bridge, it all started. Yesterday Zaporizhia, today kyiv. Yes, I think it’s reprisals, very horrible and cruel because civilians are suffering,” he says.
He feels “fear and the desire that it will end soon. We don’t understand why they are doing this to us, what is the purpose of all this?”, He adds.
Around the two impacts of the strikes, experts make surveys around the craters. A red and white ribbon is drawn all around and the areas are guarded by armed police.
After the attacks, passers-by were scarce on Krechtchatyk Street, the main thoroughfare in the city center, which crosses Maidan Square. Many stores remained closed.
The day before, Sunday afternoon, the crowd was still walking there, under a beautiful sun.
