One minute away, with little or no warning, two Russian Iskander missiles hit the Poltava Military Institute of Telecommunications in central Ukraine on Tuesday, September 3 at around 9:10 a.m. (8:10 a.m. in Paris). Several hundred people were on the site of the establishment. Shielded from view by trees, the “U” shaped building appears largely destroyed on one side. The buildings and houses bordering the four sides of the Institute remained standing, but the force of the explosion blew out many windows, doors and walls. Rescue teams lent a hand to local residents after nightfall. A hospital was also hit.
The human toll of this attack, one of the deadliest in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, was, on Tuesday evening, at least 51 dead and more than two hundred injured, but it should “alas, grow” again, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleiba, whose father is from Poltava, and who took part in a crisis meeting in kyiv on Tuesday morning.
The subject is tragic and sensitive: among the victims are soldiers. “We have lost brave Ukrainians, our brothers and sisters, soldiers”confirmed the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And of all ages, because in those wartime times the Institute, founded in the 1960s to train military telecommunications specialists, offered cutting-edge education as well as short courses to novice recruits.
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“Our classes started at 8:20 in the large teaching building.”Nikita, 26, a developer by profession, tells us on Tuesday. He was arrested on a street in Odessa, the major port on the Black Sea, on June 11, following the new mobilization law. Recruited against his will, assigned this summer to the 3e tank brigade of the Ukrainian army, he had been undergoing a month-long training course at the school since August 27 with other soldiers from various of the most prestigious brigades. He himself was housed on the base, in one of the school’s three barracks.
Traumatized Rescuers
“An alert went off in the school and on our phones, he continues. A minute and a half later, it was 9:10, a first missile fell on the building. Then a second or two later, a second missile crashed.”says the soldier. “It was the people who were outside and on the stairs of the lower floors who were killed, details the young soldier still shockedbecause the missile hit at the third floor level.”
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