Kharkiv residents reel under latest Russian drone attacks

At about 1am yesterday, Yuliia Verbytska woke to the sound of an air raid siren. She grabbed her children - Dmitry, 17, and Olexiy, 12 - and sat in the corridor, checking her phone. In the sky above came an ominous whine. Minutes later, a Russian drone crashed into the disused soap factory down the road.

- Luke Harding

"We don't have a shelter in our building, so we hide behind two concrete walls," she explained. "You wonder if this is your last moment." Yesterday's raid followed a massive attack on Thursday on Verbytska's home in Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, and on the capital, Kyiv, where 12 people were killed. "I haven't slept for two days," she said wearily.

Exhausted residents, sweeping up glass and fixing broken panels, pointed out that the latest attack came hours after a post from Donald Trump on social media. It said: "Vladimir, STOP!" Russia's president, it seemed, had decided to ignore Trump's rare rebuke. Despite peace negotiations and an appeal by Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for a month-long ceasefire, the Russians were bombing as usual.

One of the damaged buildings belongs to a charity, Heart of Kharkiv, where Verbytska volunteers. Bits of concrete fell amid clothes and donated shoes. Children's drawings were blown from a noticeboard. The charity's wheelchairs and pushchairs survived unscathed. "I don't believe in promises or words. Not from Trump or anybody else. I don't have much faith in anything any more," Verbytska said gloomily.

By late morning, emergency service workers were still extinguishing small blazes in the now-ruined factory. Built in 1918, the year of the Russian revolution, it once made soap for the Soviet Union. It went bankrupt last year. The Kremlin's drones narrowly missed an old acacia tree by its entrance gate. They flattened a brick administration building. Firefighters doused charred beams and splashed among puddles and piles of twisted metal.