almost<\/a> all major scientific discoveries in Ukraine had to climb down ladders to reach safety.<\/p>\nRussia has been pounding Kyiv around the clock for weeks with new jet-powered drones, which have proved difficult to knock down with Ukraine\u2019s current air defenses. Daily life in the capital is now punctuated by the rat-a-tat of air-defense guns, followed by a drone hitting something \u2014 a data center, a random street, a gas station, a warehouse, a high-rise building.<\/p>\n
This drone hit just before 1:30 p.m. Kyiv time, when people at the academy were on lunch break but most were eating in their offices. The injured were treated on the sidewalk outside the building \u2014 a yellow, pink and white architectural landmark originally designed in the 1850s to be a countess\u2019s boarding school for girls.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy office is gone now,\u201d said Vira Yevhrafova, 65, deputy chief scientist at the academy. \u201cIt was on the second floor \u2014 everything has collapsed, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attack on Monday killed at least two people and injured six. It is a typical toll for these drone strikes, now so regular they barely make the international news unless the images are particularly dramatic. The daughter of a woman who died showed up at the building and burst into tears. She was sad and angry but had nothing else to say.<\/p>\n
Ukrainians lamented the sight of brilliant scientific minds fleeing their burning offices. \u201cWhat an idiotic war,\u201d Andriy Kovalenko, a lieutenant in Ukraine\u2019s military and a former government official, posted on social media along with a photo of two people crawling out of windows.<\/p>\n
The attack on the sciences academy was just the start of a busy day for rescue workers and military drone interception teams. Less than two hours later, another drone hit a clinic about a mile south. An hour after that, a drone was intercepted right as it hit a nearby building.<\/p>\n
After yet another fatal strike in Kyiv, with yet another body covered by a sheet and then carted away, Ukrainians again took stock of Russia\u2019s effort to bomb them into submission.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what they want now is to frighten us and bring our lives to a halt,\u201d said Vira Balanovska, 43, who walked with her 9-year-old daughter past the burning academy. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about attacking warehouses so that we won\u2019t have food. They also want to intimidate us \u2014 to make it so that we can\u2019t work, study, do scientific research or really do anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the middle of a workday, in the middle of the Ukrainian capital, a Russian jet-powered drone struck…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[33638,84246,94841,9,24,63,122,124,123,27689],"class_list":["post-359363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-drones-pilotless-planes","tag-fires-and-firefighters","tag-kyiv-ukraine","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rescues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}