Evhen Povarenkov was standing at a line of police tape that separated the public from the intensive search and rescue operation around his building.

He stared up at what was left of his apartment, in a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. His windows had disappeared, his balcony was on the verge of collapse.

Below, personal belongings were strewn across the pathways. Bedsheets and towels hung from the branches of trees.

A cruise missile slammed into this ordinary residential block in the Solomianskyi neighbourhood in the early hours of Tuesday morning, likely travelling at about 500mph. The blast destroyed 35 apartments and hollowed out an entire section of the building.

By Wednesday afternoon, 23 people had been found dead in the rubble. Across Ukraine, at least 30 were known to have been killed in the attacks, all but two of them in Kyiv.

The air strike on Povarenkov’s building was just one of a huge wave sent by Russia – a total of more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said.

The barrage smashed the capital for nine hours, from midnight until well past dawn. It was among the worst attacks on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

Povarenkov, a 43-year-old warehouse worker, looked down from his wrecked apartment. His face was cut and grazed all over and one of his eyes was severely bloodshot. He could not see out of it.

He was in bed when the missile hit, he said. His elderly mother was asleep in the next room.

“There was heat, fire, and smoke,” he said, recalling the huge impact just metres from his wall. “I lost consciousness. When I came to, I heard my mother screaming.”

Neighbours helped Povarenkov knock out his warped door and get his mother of the apartment. Other survivors were emerging into the remains of the shattered building.

“People were screaming, children were crying,” said pensioner Arcadiy Volenchuk, 60. “It was total chaos.”

Outside, the residents tried to find a safe route through burning cars and falling debris.

“Everything was on fire,” said Alla, 69, a teacher. “The fuel tanks in the cars were exploding. Broken glass was pouring from above, along with pieces of concrete and tiles.”

Povarenkov’s mother was rushed to intensive care, he said, with two broken collarbones, cuts to both her eyes and severe damage to her internal organs that required surgery.

She was one of more than 100 wounded in the city. At around midnight, Serhii Dubrov, anesthesiologist and director of the 12th Kyiv City Clinical Hospital, felt the strikes begin.

Within hours, his hospital alone would receive 27 patients, he said.

“They had soft tissue injuries, lacerations from broken glass, damage to blood vessels. There were traumatic brain injuries and internal chest injuries. One had a severed femoral artery – we were able to repair it. The worst was a woman with open head injury.

“These are the kinds of injuries we see from these kinds of attacks.”

The patients at Dr Dubrov’s hospital ranged from 18 to 95, he said. Three were in their 90s. Strikes like these, on residential buildings, can be particularly dangerous for the elderly and infirm, who cannot easily dash to an underground shelter.

Oleksandr Bondarchuk, a 64-year-old disabled man whose apartment was also close to the impact point, could not make it to the shelter. He lay in bed terrified throughout, he said.

An hour after the attack, Bondarchuk was able to slowly make his way downstairs. “It was terrible,” he said. “Everything was destroyed.”

Some of those whose apartments were severely damaged were able to find shelter with friends or relatives. Others were not so fortunate. “This is all I have,” Bondarchuk said.

The strikes hit Ukraine as the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was travelling to the G7 conference in Canada to meet world leaders. Some in Ukraine suspect that the timing was intentional – a brutal message from Russia.

The scale of the attack underscored Ukraine’s desperate need for international support, including increased air defences. But in the end, it would prove to be an unsuccessful day for Zelensky.

His much anticipated bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump evaporated as the strikes were happening, when Trump announced he would leave the conference early amid the crisis in the Middle East.

With Trump not present, a meeting of European leaders on Ukraine failed to produce a joint statement of support for the country – a statement that was much-hoped for on the Ukrainian side.

As Zelensky travelled home from Canada on Wednesday, people from around the Solomianskyi neighbourhood in south-west Kyiv gathered to lay flowers at the site of the cruise missile attack.

Police wouldn’t let Evhen Povarenkov pass the line of tape to retrieve his and his mother’s possessions from their shattered apartment, so he just stood and stared. A hundred feet away, emergency workers had just found two more bodies in the rubble.

They did not know how many more they would find, they said.

Anastasia Levchenko contributed to this report. Photographs by Joel Gunter.