Ukrainian missile attack survivor recounts the horror of Russian blast that killed her parents
DNIPRO, Ukraine -- The three of them had dinner together in the kitchen.
It was a Saturday night in January. Anastasia Shvec had time to kill before she was due at work, so she left her parents, Natalia and Maksym, in the kitchen and went to her bedroom and lay on the bed.
She scrolled her phone, checking the news.
The sudden blast wave blew away a large section of her apartment building, including the contents and people inside.
Her own home was sliced in half. The bathroom, and a storage room in the family apartment were suddenly gone.
In the immediate aftermath she stood there, trapped high-up amid the rubble, engulfed by surreal horror.
The concrete floor of her family kitchen, where minutes before she had sat with her parents, lay disfigured. It had dropped, at least one floor down below.
Anastasia still had her phone, so she started texting and calling.
Peering out through the dust from the huge mountain of smoking debris she could see the emergency services.
She recalls shouting out for her parents. She sound some decorations left over from new year celebrations. She waved them, and cried out for help.
Later in the hospital Anastasia still had no news about the fate of her parents until she saw, on an online chat group, a message from one of her dad’s colleagues.
When she read that post she knew they were both dead and that she was now an orphan.
But the intense pain of losing people close to you in a violent way because of the war was sadly not new to Anastasia.
In September her “hero” boyfriend Vladislav Mutrunyuk was killed fighting for Ukraine in the war. He sign-up for the military in February of last year, the day after Russia invaded.
Anastasia spoke to ABC News outside the destroyed apartment building which she once called home.
“It is very hard”, she says. “Because you can’t process, that this has happened to us.”
“To know that you will never be able to return.”
Anastasia fears she will not even be able to get back into the wreckage of the apartment to collect her boyfriend’s personal belongings which she kept there.
Prior to the attack she says she had spoken with her parents about whether a missile might hit their building.
They had “joked” together that, because they lived on the sixth floor, they thought they would be fine.
However the type of missile which Ukrainian officials say hit their building was designed in Soviet times to destroy US aircraft carriers, so in the immediate vicinity of the blast there were no survivors. In total, 46 people were killed.
So how is this 23-year-old coping now, three weeks on?
The night, when she is alone, is “the most terrifying” time, she says.
She starts thinking about the plans she had with her parents and about their conversations.
“Physically I am very well, but mentally, I can't even describe it.”
“But life goes on. For some reason I lived.”
“I now live both for myself, and for my parents.”
Anastasia’s parents helped provide basic supplies for Ukrainian troops on the frontline.
She plans to continue their volunteer work.
“I am still fighting”, she says.
“I am still staying strong because this how we will save our country and win our freedom.”
