During the shelling of Kharkiv, Russian forces hit the car of “Shelter” correspondent Vladislav Yesipenko
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editor
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On the morning of August 9, during the shelling of Kharkiv, Russian forces struck a car belonging to Vladislav Yesipenko, a freelance correspondent for “Shelter.”
Vladislav was in an apartment building that was hit.
I was spending the night at a friend’s place—he’s in the military—on the seventh floor of the building. At 7 a.m., there was an explosion, but no air raid siren went off. After the explosion, smoke began to fill the building. Together with my friend, a soldier, we started breaking down the door to the neighboring apartment. Fortunately, the neighbor was alive
,” the journalist said.
We were very surprised because the apartment had no ceiling or floor panels—we could see the remains of the eighth floor through the opening above. Then we went up to the eighth floor. Until the fire hoses were brought up, we carried water in bottles and put out the fire, because a major blaze had started
,” he added.
According to Vladislav Yesipenko, all of the city’s emergency services responded very effectively.
Firefighters arrived in about seven minutes, and the ambulances got there on time. People were given water, and doctors and psychologists were on the scene. The mayor of Kharkiv came in person. We are very grateful to them for that. Even when there was a threat of the fire reigniting, the firefighters did not stop working. Everything functioned like a well-oiled machine
— the journalist noted.
According to preliminary reports, three people were killed and dozens were injured as a result of the Russian strike on the Saltivsky district of Kharkiv.
Previously, Vladislav Yesipenko worked as a freelance correspondent for the Crimean bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In 2021, he was detained by Russian security services in the temporarily occupied Crimea; Vladislav was convicted by the occupiers on fabricated charges.
As a result, the journalist spent more than four years behind bars and was subjected to torture. He was released on June 20, 2025.
As a reminder, on the morning of August 9, Russian troops carried out targeted drone strikes on residential high-rises in the Saltivskyi district of Kharkiv. One person was killed in the attack, and 13 others sustained injuries of varying severity. The first enemy drone struck a 10-story residential building. The explosion destroyed the structure from the 7th to the 10th floors. Shortly thereafter, the enemy launched a second strike, hitting a neighboring high-rise.
It was later reported that the number of casualties from the Russian strike on a residential high-rise in the Saltivskyi district of Kharkiv had risen to 37. A large-scale search-and-rescue operation is ongoing at the site of the strike. Two men, aged 50 and 66, were killed as a result of the enemy shelling.
Author
Viacheslav Zhaivoronok editor
All materialsHe studied at the Faculty of Philology at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He has been working in journalism since the early 2000s. He has worked for the publications "Ukrainski Novyny," OBOZ.UA, "RBC-Ukraine," and "Apostrof."