Widow describes surviving missile attack that destroyed her Ukrainian home

The Russian missile turned Vera Kosolopenko’s small home into a fiery pyre that consumed the Bible and all of the other precious mementos that she cherished of her late husband.

“I have lost everything that connected me to him,” she wept on Saturday as she stood by the smoldering remains of the house destroyed by the missile a day earlier. “All I have left is the portrait engraved on his gravestone.”

The diminutive 67-year-old widow, who lives in the northeastern village Bezruky, is lucky to be alive.

She and two friends were drinking tea inside the house when the missile slammed into the roof.

“It was so quick,” she said. “It was terrifying.”

Kosolopenko surveys