Kyiv resident Yulia says she felt the blast that struck children's cancer hospital in Ukraine
Yulia was filming with her phone when a nearby children's hospital was struck by a Russian missile. (Instagram: Yewleea)
Yulia is sitting in her barely lit apartment in central Kyiv. There's a power outage across the city – another one. She's resigned to it.
"They come and go, basically three to four times a day," she says.
One other thing Yulia has gotten used to is air raids and she says many Ukrainians know what type is coming by the sound.
"We have three levels of air raids," Yulia tells 7.30.
"If we see that it's a MiG-31 (a supersonic interceptor aircraft), no one goes to the bomb shelter because it's just a MiG-31 changing airfields.
"Then there is Shahed, so UAVs (more commonly known as drones). Then there is an air raid for cruise missiles and an air raid for ballistics.
"Ballistics is what I go to the bomb shelter for."
At 9:30am on Monday, July 8, Yulia was doing her dishes when she heard an air raid outside her window. She felt confident if was likely a MiG.
"In Ukraine you get used to these sounds," she tells 7.30.
"You know the sound of something hitting. You know what's a sound of a of a missile being intercepted [and] you know what a UAV sounds like.
"Your ears are trained," she says.
Yulia continued going about her day, deciding to take her dog for a walk. She then turned on her phone camera to start a TikTok video in the lobby of her apartment building but was taken aback by a deafening sound.
Rescuers work at the Okhmatdyt children's hospital after it was was hit by a Russian missile. (Reuters: Oleksandr Ratushniak)
"I felt the blast," she says.
"I immediately knew that's not air defence working, that's contact. And something was hit," she says.
It was the sound of missiles striking Okhmatdyt, Ukraine's biggest hospital for children with cancer.
Loading...That strike was part of a missile bombardment which killed at least 38 people across Ukraine, hypersonic missiles were reported to have hit the hospital.
"We walked towards there. It literally looked like Armageddon," Yulia says.
New York to wartime Kyiv
Yulia was living in New York when the war started. (Instagram: Yewleea)
Life wasn't always like this for 29-year-old Yulia, who doesn't want to use her full name for fear of becoming a target for Russian cyber criminals.
Before the war she lived in New York City, working as a user experience (UX) designer.
Then in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the war, Yulia says she was surrounded by New Yorkers who had lots of "silly" questions.
Yulia says she felt "very alone" in New York as war raged in Ukraine. (Instagram: Yewleea)
As a Ukranian she says she was expected to provide all the answers, and that sometimes frustrated her.
One day a friend suggested she post her interpretation of events on TikTok.
Recalling the moment she says she thought it was "the dumbest idea on the planet", because at the time TikTok's reputation was for things like "Charli D'Amelio dancing and shaking her booty".
So instead Yulia took to Instagram.
"That video got tens of thousands of views, and people had so many questions."
She says that shortly after she relented, and started posting on TikTok too, where her first videos went off, with hundreds of thousands of views and comments.
"I'm a nerd. I've always loved geopolitics and history, and that was one of these things that I knew a lot about. So I started answering these questions.
"I did some 'lives' with my history teacher from high school, and then United 24 reached out to me so I started working with them."
United 24 is Ukraine's official fundraising platform and a state-owned media initiative.
In 2023 Yulia decided to move back to Ukraine to volunteer on the ground and be close to her parents.
She arrived in August 2023 and felt immediate relief.
"[In New York] when you enter a room and someone asks you where you're from, or they know you're Ukrainian, people look at you different," she says.
"There are two scenarios that happen. People either try to be overly supportive and they're just too much, or people try to act like nothing's happening. And both of these things are fake.
"I felt very alone."
Back in Ukraine, Yulia says she felt like she could be herself again.
"I felt at home, and I realised [that] I can actually go get a coffee with a friend and I no longer feel like it's a job".
Global attention back on Ukraine
More than two years into the war, Yulia started feeling as though people outside had forgotten about it.
She says that photos of everyday Ukrainians sitting in Kyiv restaurants and sipping coffee have led to people claiming that Ukranian propagandists have been photoshopping pictures of the bombings all along.
"I have a record player, and I buy plants the same way as you do, because I want to feel normal," she says.
"Just because I don't sit in my basement every day waiting for a missile to kill me, doesn't mean that there isn't a war."
News about this week's bombing of the children's hospital near Yulia's house brought global attention back to Ukraine.
At Wimbledon, Ukraianian world number 21 Elina Svitolina broke down during an on-court interview, saying she was happy with her performance but sad for her country.
Svitolina like other Ukrainian tennis players has steadfastly refused to shake the hands of Russian or Belarusian players since the commencement of the war.
Yulia says it usually takes a celebrity speaking out for people to start caring about the war again.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer meets President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington DC ahead of the NATO summit. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via Reuters)
"I think more people are talking about Elina Svitolina breaking down than people are talking about the actual attack," she says.
As world leaders gather in Washington for the NATO summit, Yulia says a drastic change in strategy is needed to avoid a never-ending war and an even bigger global conflict.
"A lot of world leaders are collectively going through seven stages of denial, where they think this is going to just resolve itself once it drags out far enough [that] Russia is going to get exhausted and it's going to end but that's not it," she says.
"You either give us all the means and power to finish this or you're going to be in for a very, very unpleasant surprise at the end of it.
"Because Russia is not just going to back off."
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