Nataliia reacts as she looks at the damage inside her house following an aerial attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 22, 2026. (Diego Fedele / Getty Images)
On Oct. 21, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff gushingly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for being a "humanitarian."
Just a few hours later, Kyiv once again came under a fresh barrage of devastating Russian missiles, killing at least one person and injuring over 20.
"We thought this was a war and the destruction of Ukraine, but it turns out to be an act of humanity," Nataliia Stativko, a former journalist, told the Kyiv Independent on a street devastated by one of the missiles. .
"Now we will die and bury our children, knowing that this is an act of humanity."
The attack hit the city's central Pecherskyi District, which, throughout Russia's full-scale invasion, had been among the capital's least frequently targeted areas and was considered safe by many residents.
"Now there is no safe place in Kyiv — death is breathing down your neck everywhere," Dasha Bilous, 25, a local resident, told the Kyiv Independent.
"Now we will die and bury our children, knowing that this is an act of humanity."
Kniaziv Ostrozkykh Street is almost entirely covered in shattered glass, and barely a single window in the surrounding buildings remains intact. A crater over a meter in diameter marks the middle of the road, where a fragment of a Russian missile lay just hours ago.
Exhausted after a sleepless night, residents are gathering pieces of plywood and plastic sheeting to cover their broken windows and keep at least some warmth inside their homes, as rain falls outside and a piercing autumn wind cuts through the streets.
While Kyiv residents pick up the pieces and try to resume their lives, they are left grappling with Witkoff's words from his Oct. 21 meeting with Putin in Saint Petersburg, in which the two discussed a "peace settlement" to Russia's war against Ukraine.
During the meeting, Moscow announced the release of 74-year-old American citizen Stephen Hubbard. Russian forces detained Hubbard during the occupation of Ukraine's Kharkiv Oblast in the early months of the full-scale invasion in 2022. In 2024, a Russian court convicted him of serving as a mercenary in the Ukrainian military, an accusation his family and lawyer disputed.
Witkoff described Putin as a "humanitarian" while commenting on Hubbard's release.
The area where Stativko lives was likely targeted overnight not only with conventional cruise and ballistic missiles, but also with cluster munitions, which scatter smaller explosive charges upon detonation, causing more widespread damage across a larger area.
Andrii Saulevych, manager of the local coffee shop Khlibna Kraina, also felt the impact of Russia's missile attack firsthand. The cafe's windows were completely blown out, but by 8 a.m. local time, it was already serving coffee to customers again.
"We put a piece of ourselves into every coffee shop," he said. "It's deeply upsetting to see everything destroyed like this."
"Humanitarians don't act this way. This is something else. This is anti-humanitarian," Saulevych added.
Another resident of the district, teacher Yaroslav Bahai, spent the morning waiting in line for humanitarian aid instead of preparing his lessons. The windows in his apartment had been blown out, and shrapnel had pierced straight through his kitchen refrigerator. His family was fortunate to survive the attack unharmed: they had taken shelter in the hallway with their children when the missiles struck.
Bahai said the war has significantly changed the way he teaches. His school cannot accommodate all its students in the bomb shelter, while the constant air raid alerts that have plagued the capital in recent months have made learning increasingly difficult, even online.
"I used to give children an assignment asking who they see themselves becoming in five years. Now they say it's hard for them to even imagine what tomorrow will look like," he said.
Bahai and his family have no plans to leave Kyiv for now, despite the approaching winter, which could be one of Ukraine's most difficult since 2022 due to continued Russian attacks and damage to the country's energy infrastructure. Bilous, however, is considering leaving the capital. Although reluctant to abandon her home, she said she can no longer cope with the constant sense of danger, which only continues to grow.
A fragment of a Russian missile landed right next to her house, shattering all the windows.
"I thought I was going to die," Bilous said.
"Such a 'gift' arrived in Kyiv after the (Witkoff-Putin) meeting. Who was it from? Putin? Witkoff? Trump?"