War of words Deadly attack on Kharkiv book printer

Olena Ninadovska was inside Ukraine's biggest printing house when the Russian missile hit.

- Luke Harding

Olena Ninadovska was inside Ukraine's biggest printing house when the Russian missile hit. It was 10.20am.

Two colleagues - Tetiana Khrapina and Olha Kurasova - stood next to her. The women were operating a row of booksewing machines. Another employee, Sveta Arestova, had just stepped away to take a telephone call.

The S-300 missile came through the roof. There was no warning. It instantly killed Ninadovksa and the others at her workstation. Arestova was injured but survived. The blast flipped over a 10-tonne book-finishing machine, killing Svitlana Ryzhenko, who was sitting at the end of the assembly line. Two more workers died at an adjacent table. Another, Roman Stroyhi, was killed by shards from a guillotine machine.

Seven people died in the attack on 23 May at the Factor Druk printing house in Kharkiv. Twenty-one were injured.

Nine remain in hospital; two in intensive care. The firm's general director, Tetiana Hryniuk, said the strike was on one of the biggest printing complexes in Europe. Kharkiv, the second city after Kyiv, is Ukraine's publishing hub.