When house becomes trap: why Russians deliberately strike apartment blocks and how those still breathing are found under rubble"
My interlocutor has spent many years in search-and-rescue operations and has led many of them. From experience, he can tell whether there is any chance of finding anyone alive beneath the rubble of a building hit by a Shahed drone or a missile. He acknowledges, however, that there are cases when, after many hours of searching, rescuers do manage to find alive those who miraculously survived, and he recounts such cases.
In an interview with Censor.NET, Volodymyr Kachkan, Director of the Emergency Response Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and a Major General of the Civil Protection Service, explained how to stay safe during enemy strikes, what it means to "listen" to the silence, why the two-wall rule does not always work, and which civilian facilities Russians most often target.
"IN A PANEL BUILDING, DEPENDING ON THE IMPACT, AS MANY AS 16 FLOORS CAN 'PANCAKE' AT ONCE."
- The number of Shahed drones and missiles the enemy uses in combined attacks is growing. How do you decide where to send your assets when there are multiple impact sites at once? Is the algorithm for search-and-rescue operations always the same, or do you draw up a new plan each time based on your assessment of the situation?
- First, we deploy units to the residential sector, places where apartments and houses have been hit and people may have been injured. And we roll out to the scene even during an air-raid alert.
We do have established protocols, but I won’t spell them out, because making them public could ultimately harm our units if the enemy learns about them.
- These days, we mostly learn from Telegram channels when Shaheds are inbound or when missile strikes are likely. You must be getting information from other sources earlier and have some time to spare. How do you use it? Do you try to get at least a little sleep?
- No, I don’t even lie down. I wake my wife and kids so they can make it to the underground parking garage. It’s important for me to know they’re safe, then I can work calmly.
While we’re getting ready, the driver in the service car is already heading to me. There was a time he couldn’t make it, because the official vehicle was destroyed in a strike. Thankfully, he managed to take cover.
Next time, he did get through, and as I stepped out of the garage, they started shooting down ballistic missiles overhead. That was "fun." Then we drove to one of the sites in Podil that had been hit. But there were still Shaheds on the approach. The driver said one of them was diving straight at us. We crouched, there wasn’t really time to take proper cover. It detonated roughly 50 meters away. So situations vary, and on nights like that, we don’t get any sleep.
- If a Shahed or a missile hits a building, who arrives first, rescuers or police?
- The first to arrive is the unit from the nearest fire-and-rescue station. Then, other units of ours and the police, almost simultaneously, command posts are set up. The wounded are assisted, and then the rubble is cleared to reach people trapped underneath.
In parallel, we work with other services to determine how many apartments were in the building and how many people could have been living there.
I’ve often been among the first to reach destroyed buildings. Before the command posts are set up, it’s usually chaos: people don’t know what to do, they’re running around in the dark, shouting. And not only residents of the destroyed building, but also people from neighboring ones who have come outside. If Shaheds are making another run at that moment, of course, people panic. In daylight, you can still see it; at night, you only hear the sound and you know it’s diving.
- What actions are considered correct in such a situation? Should one quickly run out of the building, or stay in place waiting for rescuers if the apartment is partially damaged and the extent of destruction in the stairwell or the building as a whole is unclear?
- We constantly emphasize: when an air-raid alert is announced, you must go to a shelter. If, for some reason, you did not manage to do so and your building was hit, call 101 immediately to report your exact location.
Each situation is different, so there are no universal recommendations. You need to weigh the circumstances: if it is possible to leave safely and there is no immediate threat to life nearby, you should do so and take cover in a safe place, since a repeat strike may occur. At the same time, if a fire has broken out as a result of the strike, it is not worth the risk.
Everyone must know where the safe places are near their home. Ignoring this today is dangerous.
- Many Ukrainians follow the two-wall rule to protect themselves during massive Russian attacks. After all, not everyone manages to get to a shelter before the Shaheds arrive, and later they are afraid to leave their apartment. There are also those who refuse to leave their homes altogether.
At the same time, I read in the media, citing the State Emergency Service, that the two-wall rule no longer protects as effectively as before, since the enemy is reinforcing the warheads of strike drones. What would you advise people who sleep through the beginning of an attack at night or, for other reasons, remain in their apartment or private house?
- The State Emergency Service did not establish the two-wall rule. But let me give you an example. More than a year ago, a building in the Solomianskyi district of the capital was pierced by a missile from the 17th to the 19th floor. Three floors were completely destroyed. Many people died. Some were thrown out of the building by the blast wave. One body was found 100 meters away in a park.
At that time, I was still commander of the Mobile Rescue Center. We were working at the site. A woman came up to me and said: "Find my children." Her children were a young couple. They had married just two months earlier, and their parents had rented them an apartment.
I asked the woman where they might have been in the apartment. She replied that they had hidden in the storage room.
We requested floor plans of the building from the relevant services and located the spot where the storage room had been. By morning, we had dug them out. Both had been killed. So much for the two-wall rule.
If you cannot make it to a shelter in time, you should find the nearest safe place close to your building. I stress again: everyone must know where it is. Plan your route, and if necessary, rehearse how to get there quickly. Tell your children about it and agree with your relatives that in case of danger, you will meet there.
Even while inside an apartment, many people try to hide in the bathroom, toilet, storage room, or hallway, hoping that this will guarantee safety. However, such places are not always reliable, especially during powerful strikes or structural collapse. That is why it is important to know in advance the truly safe place and get there quickly.
- Still, how should one choose a place in the apartment if they didn’t make it to a shelter?
- It all depends on the building’s construction. In panel buildings, if they are hit, the structure can "pancake," but there will be voids. If a strike hits older brick buildings constructed in the 1950s, people are completely buried under construction debris and there are virtually no voids.
- If there are voids, are the chances of survival higher?
- If you end up beneath them. But in a panel building, depending on the impact, as many as 16 floors can "pancake" at once.
- Are you talking about old buildings, or new builds as well?
- New buildings are monolithic and stronger. For example, that building in the Solomianskyi district was pierced by a missile, but it still stood.
- And do Russians mostly hit old ones?
- From what we see, the Russians try to strike old residential buildings to cause the greatest possible destruction and more fatalities, and to trigger panic among people.
- In Kyiv, for instance, we see that strikes come more often in a few districts and mainly hit older buildings, while some areas are largely unaffected. What is the logic? New builds have more floors than older ones.
- Only the Russians know for sure; I can offer a hypothesis. To hit a new building, they need to use a missile, which is very expensive.
- A Shahed won’t do the job?
- No. We responded to one address where a drone hit the first floor of a new building. It blew out one balcony, but the building as a whole held.
- Do you remember the two-story house half of which was blown away by the explosion? The one where teenagers came and waited while their classmate’s body was freed. The Russians used a missile then. It’s unclear how much explosive they packed into it, because dozens of nearby buildings were damaged, their internal walls were blown out, as well as a school.
- In districts with older housing stock, there aren’t many shelters. And such buildings usually don’t have proper basements. Is this being communicated to local authorities? I mean across all regions, not just Kyiv.
- Of course, all of this is discussed. But it’s not my line of work; my colleague who heads the Civil Protection Department can speak to it in more detail.
For my part, I will advise everyone to look for shelters or safer spaces and not to ignore air raid alerts, because for now, there is no other option.
- How safe is it to wait out a strike in an underground parking garage?
- My family personally goes down to the garage. But you need to understand how and by whom it was built to judge how safe it is.
A direct missile hit will not spare either a parking garage or a building with a basement. But they will protect you from Shahed fragments.
- What should a person do if they end up under the rubble but are still alive?
- If someone is trapped after a strike, the first thing to do is breathe, even through the panic. And if you hear that the machinery has stopped, make noise. Our procedure is set up this way: we work for half an hour, then we hold a "minute of silence." This is done so we can hear anything coming from under the rubble.
In addition, special devices, sonars, are used to listen to what’s happening beneath the debris. If a person is making sounds, they will pick them up. Canine teams with dogs are also deployed to search.
There was a case where a man was found alive under a collapsed building. In my view, an office chair saved him. His body was pinned and he couldn’t move, but his head was under the chair back, so he could breathe. He was heavily buried. It took us almost two hours to dig him out. Altogether, he spent about six hours under the rubble.
Another case was in Dnipro, a missile strike in January 2023. I went to Dnipro with my unit; we were clearing the debris. They rescued a woman who had been under the rubble for nearly two days. Her young child and husband were killed, but she survived.
Her rescue was complicated by the fact that she was deaf. We would hear certain sounds and stop work, but she couldn’t hear us when we asked if anyone was alive. We found her anyway. Rescuers move over the debris and listen.
- How was she found, then?
- First, they swept the floor she was on, she was off to the side, where there were voids in the rubble. Then they heard her shouting, stopped everything, and listened. Fortunately, she was rescued alive.
- If you shout a lot, breathing gets even harder and you tire quickly.
- This woman couldn’t hear whether the machinery was running. But if a person can hear, they should wait until it goes quiet and then shout.
- That takes real stamina.
- You can also bang if you have something metal at hand. Relatives help us too, they tell us who might have been where.
We also listen for phones. We coordinate with the National Police; they track whether a phone is on the network. If we hear a phone ringing, we dig right there.
There was a case where a phone was buried and out of network. When we cleared the concrete slabs, it came back on the network. We thought the young man his parents were waiting for was alive, but he had been killed.
"AT ONE LOCATION, AFTER A MISSILE STRUCK A BUILDING AND DETONATED, SIX MORE SHAHEDS CAME IN NEARBY"
- Do you keep hoping to the last that people are alive, or do you try not to think about it while you’re working during search-and-rescue operations?
- I’ve spent many years in search-and-rescue operations and have led many of them. Frankly, with time and experience, you begin to understand whether there’s any chance of finding anyone alive.
I can’t say this out loud until all the work is complete, because relatives, parents, hold out hope to the very end. Even during the identification process, it’s hard for them to accept the loss.
- When we follow such incidents, we also hope to the last that those under the rubble are alive.
- So do we. But there is a point at which you have to decide whether rescuers continue working by hand or we bring in engineering equipment. Even when we do use machinery, a rescuer stands by every excavator bucket to make sure nothing is damaged.
- So if you’re already using heavy equipment, does that mean there’s nothing left to hope for?
- No. We’re working in a combined way now, both personnel and engineering equipment, because without a crane we can’t lift a concrete slab. But if, in a given area, we’ve already established that there are no survivors under the debris and no remains of the dead, we start clearing everything with machinery. A rescuer will still be standing there, watching. With missile strikes, bodies can be torn apart and end up in different places.
- Have there been cases when you thought no one alive would be found, yet someone survived?
- There have. For example, the young man under the chair I mentioned. When rescuers have been digging for three or four hours and suddenly a living person is found in the rubble, they work differently, their eyes light up.
One of the rescuers supported the man’s head for an hour. They applied a splint so he wouldn’t move while the digging continued. We don’t know what other injuries he has until we get him out completely. Everything has to be done as carefully as possible so as not to cause further harm.
- Do rescuers often risk their lives while working on such collapse sites?
- There is equipment that checks buildings for structural stability. These are total stations that react instantly and give alerts if any structural elements start to shift, so rescuers can get out quickly.
Overall, we eliminate hazards completely so that municipal services can decide the future of a destroyed building.
But there was one building, an old brick one, where at a certain point we realized we couldn’t even move the slabs. As soon as we started clearing something, not one slab but two apartments, two floors, would move. Essentially, it began to crumble. So we stopped work. That side was left with unstable structures.
- How do you operate if there are repeat strikes? On the one hand, there are people under the rubble; on the other, you’re exposing yourselves to risk.
- We have systems that help monitor the situation; there’s information exchange with other services, I won’t go into details. We get early alerts if more drones are inbound. Missiles are a bit trickier; they move faster.
On site, we always determine how we will withdraw units and where the shelters are. So we factor in the risk.
But there are situations when you’ve only just arrived and haven’t had time to do anything, then another strike. You hit the floor. What else can you do?
And there are plenty of repeat strikes. At one location, after a missile detonated having struck a building, six more Shaheds came in nearby. They came down in a ring, literally within 100 meters.
- Open sources say Russian Shaheds can drop time-delayed cluster munitions. What do you do if you come across one?
- We have our own EOD units. They examine everything without fail.
Obviously, if the sappers are still en route and firefighters arrive first, they rescue people. Whether anything is left there or not, they will still rescue people. Then the sappers work in parallel with them; operations don’t stop. But if something is found—say, a missile warhead on a given floor, we will have to halt for a time.
It’s good if it’s spotted at all, because it can be buried in the debris.
- Do people often come to the site and try to help? How useful is that kind of help in rescue operations?
- At the first stage, it hinders us. We can’t get vehicles in, we’re trying to set up equipment, prepare working areas. Meanwhile, residents approach rescuers, urgently wanting to go back in, demanding that we retrieve household appliances they believe survived.
For example, in Kyiv region, I had such a case. A strike on a modern two-story dormitory. The front wall had fallen away. They were extinguishing the fire. Everything else was still standing. Firefighters are dousing the building; the basement is already on fire.
We were waiting nearby with one of the regional administration’s leaders. A man walked up and said he could see his washing machine and wanted to take it out. I told him I didn’t recommend it. He took a step forward… and at that moment the building collapsed like a house of cards. Had he taken a few more steps, he would have been under the rubble.
Therefore, it’s dangerous for civilians to enter such sites. We inspect all apartments together with the police. Sometimes we don’t even let police in if the risk is high.
In some situations, there are no stairwells, and we have to enter using articulated boom lifts. But there are still people alive in the apartments, and they need to be extracted.
So if any volunteer organizations want to help, they can work through the Red Cross. And they need to register. If everyone shows up at once at a site where rescuers are working and tries to help from all sides, it distracts from the core tasks.
There are even conflict situations. Once, some young guys ran in with shovels and started telling us we were clearing the rubble the wrong way. They acted aggressively. The police had to intervene. We’re not going to get into a "showdown" with someone on a collapse site.
There’s another nuance I want to flag. Many people show up wearing "pixel" camouflage. We don’t know who these people are. Later the enemy uses those photos to claim they struck a military site, when in fact a residential building was destroyed.
- Let’s talk about rescuers’ work in frontline areas, particularly in Kherson, where enemy drones are essentially "hunting" people.
- The city suffers not only drone attacks—artillery is active as well. Our units carry out tasks amid constant risk and the possibility of repeat strikes. Often, while handling the aftermath of shelling, rescuers have to pause, move to safe locations or shelters, and then return to continue working.
- Russians often target houses and cars, and you have to respond in the open, where you yourself can become a victim. To me, that’s terrifying.
- It is terrifying, but people work. There are specialized protective tools and armored vehicles. But the situation there is truly difficult. On the day I arrived, by noon, there were already nine wounded, civilians, and one more person had been killed. The artillery barrage never stopped.
- What is the situation in Sumy region now? Do you have enough equipment and personnel, given the drone and missile attacks?
- Overall, we have what we need. We form composite task forces from the personnel of several SESU units that deploy to different regions to reinforce efforts and not only to Sumy. These teams include not only fire-and-rescue and engineering units that clear rubble, shore up buildings, open access routes, and help extract people from the ruins, but also EOD technicians, medics, canine teams, divers, and other specialists. They all go wherever additional support is needed and the situation is most difficult.
As for equipment, our international partners primarily provide support.
In addition, our units are being reinforced and new ones are being formed. For example, we previously had no engineering units; now they are quite capable and have a large amount of engineering equipment. We are also using robotic equipment that we didn’t have before. We are constantly developing and adapting to the realities of war.
Overall, since the start of the full-scale war, there have been 232,475 responses specifically to deal with the aftermath of hostilities. 28,075 fires have been extinguished. 6,492 people have been rescued. 4,389 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble. 2,823 destroyed buildings and structures have been cleared, including 1,343 residential buildings, 37 health care facilities, 123 education facilities, 131 critical infrastructure facilities, and another 1,189 other facilities (as of September 18, 2025).
- If a civilian building is hit, who decides whether it can continue to be used? I mean after the search-and-rescue operation is over.
- Local authorities set up the relevant commissions. They decide the building’s fate: whether it will be restored or has to be demolished.
Tetiana Bodnia, Censor. NET
