Porcelain fish survives Russian strike on Kyiv apartment building and becomes symbol of resilience – photos

An apartment belonging to volunteer and medic Andrii Dubenko in Kyiv's Lisovyi residential area was damaged during the Russian attack on the capital on 14 October.

However, among the personal belongings destroyed in the attack, a porcelain "fish of resilience" survived intact.

Source: Dubenko's cousin Anna Danylenko in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia (Life)

Quote: "Today, the Russian world came to our family too. All those horrific photos from Lisovyi show my brother's section of the building. Those close to me know that I have two brothers. My cousin Andrii Dubenko has helped many people as a volunteer, dentist, medic and simply as someone who can fix almost anything. But now he's the one who needs help."

Details: Anna said her brother, his fiancée and their 72-year-old aunt were in the flat at the time of the strike. They survived because they followed the two-wall rule .

Rescue workers evacuated them using a rescue platform within 15 minutes of the attack.

The neighbouring apartment and the corridor were gutted by fire. All the windows in Andrii Dubenko's flat were blown out, while the blast wave damaged the rooms, completely destroying one of them. The force of the explosion was so powerful that it even ripped the linoleum from the floor.

"[My aunt] was comforting my brother's fiancée and telling her that we should not dwell on the past but look to the future.

We didn't sleep all night. We came back in the morning to clear the rubble because we hadn't been able to enter the apartment during the night – they were still putting out the fire. Everything is burnt, and there is a lot of water in the corridor, which was gutted by the fire. People are throwing broken belongings out of the windows onto the ground below. The smell of burning is everywhere," Anna said.

Among the debris, she gathered together the remains of a family tea set that they had used to drink tea from a samovar when their grandmother was still alive.

"It was my anchor, the anchor of our family," Anna wrote.

At the same time, a porcelain fish belonging to the family survived – reminiscent of the famous ceramic cockerel from Borodianka.

"Now we have our own 'fish of resilience' that has survived. Even my mother used to play with it. It was only on Monday that I was sitting in their cosy flat, where I grew up, and now I am looking through a hole that was a window just two days ago. [...]

It was painful to see injured people clearing out their homes – and, along with them, dismantling their lives," Anna said.

The family now needs help rebuilding their home. Anna has posted bank details on social media for those wishing to provide financial support.

Background: On 14 October, Russian forces struck a nine-storey residential building in the Lisovyi area of Kyiv's Desnianskyi district. The attack killed two people and injured 17 others.

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