Olga was jolted awake by an explosion so powerful that her apartment building shuddered and the windows and furniture shook. Looking outside, she saw a plume of thick black smoke rising from a military equipment factory that had just been hit by a missile.
Residents panicked, said Olga, a 49-year-old choreographer. “We didn’t know whether we should run to a shelter,” she said. The strike on the plant left six people dead and another 26 injured, according to the local governor.
Olga doesn’t live in Kyiv, Kherson or any other Ukrainian city that’s been pounded for years by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces. This is Kirov, a Russian city about 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow known for its 16th century onion-domed monastery rather than being in a war zone.
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