Flowers for Dnipro

Residents of Russian cities have been creating spontaneous memorials next to landmarks to commemorate civilians killed in a January 14 Russian rocket attack on an apartment building in Dnipro, Ukraine. Forty-five people were killed, six of them children.

The bomb landed on a devyatetazhka, a nine-story residential building. These buildings can be found in every corner of the former USSR, making the tragedy instantly relatable to residents across Russia and Eastern Europe.

Russians across the country paid their respects shortly after the attack. Krasnodar residents left toys and pictures of the destroyed building by a monument honoring the Ukrainian writer Taras Schevchenko. In St. Petersburg, candles spelled "Dnipro" next to Shevchenko's statue. In Yekaterinburg, a memorial was set next to a statue honoring the victims of political repression. 1417 kilometers away in Moscow, flowers covered the statue of Lesya Ukrainka, a referent of Ukrainian literature. On January 18, police arrested four mourners and removed all signs of grief from the monument. 

Russian authorities have blamed Ukrainian air defense forces for the explosion. However, the rocket used in the attack was a Russian Kh-22 anti-ship missile, which is as long as a school bus and which the Ukrainian Military is not equipped to defend against.