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Oleksandr Polishchuk knows suffering more than most.
He lost friends after joining the Ukrainian Army in 2015 when Russia invaded eastern Ukraine. He lost his first wife to the pandemic. In 2022, shortly after the Russians launched their full-scale invasion, he was captured and lost his freedom for 100 days. As a prisoner of war in the damp, dark basement of a makeshift prison in a former shoe factory, he lost part of his eyesight.
But Mr. Polishchuk also knows how to cope. He remarried and had a daughter. He went to work at a recycling center. When air-raid sirens woke the family early Thursday morning, Mr. Polishchuk threw on his robe, wrapped his 2-year-old in a blanket and ran for the basement. He had done this almost every night of her life, after every siren.
This time, he never made it.
The missile hit before Mr. Polishchuk could get there, leaving him clutching his toddler in a pile of rubble, both alive. The weapon, which Ukrainian authorities say was manufactured by North Korea, had slammed into the balcony where, just days before, the family was grilling marinated pork cutlets to celebrate the 44th birthday of Mr. Polishchuk’s wife, Anna Polishchuk.
The explosion killed 13 people and injured almost 90, the deadliest attack in the capital, Kyiv, since last summer. For this article, The New York Times talked to more than a dozen family members, neighbors and friends of the victims, a tight-knit, decades-old community now blown apart.
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The building was constructed during World War II, and the people who lived there were as much family as neighbors. Its residents were given their apartments during Soviet times. Most of them stayed for decades. Children grew up and left and came back. Elders died. Other relatives moved in.
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