Karol SwiackiA UK-based aid worker said he, his friends and colleagues were “so lucky to be alive” after they narrowly escaped a Russian missile attack on a hotel in Ukraine on Wednesday night that left at least four dead.
Karol Swiacki, a Polish national and founder of the Bournemouth-based charity Ukraine Relief, was at the Central Hotel in Kryvyi Rih having dinner with friends when the missile struck.
“We are all safe we didn’t have a scratch, it is incredible,” Mr Swiacki told BBC News, adding “we still don’t know how we survived this, honestly.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram that more than 30 people were wounded in the attack and rescuers were still at the scene.
The charity worker – who has previously won a BBC award – is in Ukraine carrying out aid relief work including delivering sports equipment and renovating a school for 550 children.
He is also visiting shelters and orphanages with Ukraine Relief’s trustee, Marc Edwards – a British national who now lives in the US.
The duo were having dinner with friends at the hotel restaurant at the time of the strike. The dining party included two US volunteers, two workers from a Ukrainian charity foundation, a young boy and his pregnant mother.
“We’d just put our stuff in our rooms and went to eat with our local Ukrainian contacts and the cell phone alarm went off so we ran to the shelter,” said Mr Edwards.
Mr Swiacki added: “We took two steps and there was a big boom, absolute nightmare, everything just within seconds changed into a very apocalyptic news screams, alarms.”
Video sent by Mr Swiacki to the BBC showed smoke filling the restaurant with half-eaten meals and takeaway boxes on tables.
“There was so much stuff that we couldn’t see where we were going,” said Mr Swiacki.
Mr Edwards confirmed that the blast “took out all the windows” and they had to climb out of the restaurant through a broken window.
The duo went back into the hotel to see if anyone else was hurt, and retrieve some of their belongings.
They also went outside to look for their vehicles, which were “full of aid” but were “all destroyed”, Mr Edwards said.
Mr Swiacki’s van, which he had parked outside the hotel, was “smashed completely to pieces”.
“We heard some noises we don’t want to hear again. Somebody was trapped under the rubble next to our van and didn’t make it. Someone was hit from shrapnel and didn’t make it. I’m numb,” he said.
Mr Swiacki described the scene as “crazy, absolutely nightmare”.
He said the restaurant was on the ground floor, and believes that it is the only room – or at least one of the few rooms – that didn’t collapse.
The men are still in Kryvyi Rih and despite the shock of the explosion, Mr Swiacki said he has not been deterred him from continuing his aid work in Ukraine.
“I will never stop helping people after this,” he said.
The attack happened ahead of a European security summit on Wednesday which Zelensky is attending.
Reacting to it, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said it showed “why Ukraine needs defence capabilities: to protect human lives from Russian terror”.
Karol Swiacki
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