- September 30, 2026
- 8:52 pm
- World News
On the night of September 29, 2026, a Russian attack on the Odessa region hit a place where rescued animals were kept. In the “Loving Hearts” shelter, there were 136 dogs and 48 cats — almost two hundred animals, many of which had already survived the streets, diseases, hunger, or human indifference. After the strike, a fire broke out, flames spread through the premises and enclosures, and by morning it was known that ten cats and three dogs had died.
Author: Elena Gunko
And this is one of those cases where the dry figure “13 dead animals” explains almost nothing. To understand what happened, you need to imagine several dozen minutes inside a burning shelter: explosions continue nearby, animals hide in panic, fire cuts off passages, and the owner, who was just thrown back by the blast wave, goes back inside because there are still dogs and cats left.
The explosion threw her away from the gates
The shelter’s director, Olga Shilimina, was on the premises feeding the animals at the time of the first strike. The blast wave threw her from the gates to the middle of the yard. She fell, took a few moments to recover, and realized there could be a second hit, but instead of leaving, she grabbed a bottle of water and a fire extinguisher and ran to where the animals were.
Later she described her state after the explosion very simply: “my head felt like jelly”. But there was no time to deal with herself. With the next strike, she managed to get five cats out and literally grab one dog, the rest of the animals, out of fear, huddled in the farthest corner of the room. The fire quickly cut off this section, and it was practically impossible to get there.
“I fell. The blast wave threw me. My head felt like jelly from the shock wave. When I got up, I understood there could be a second hit, and I needed to save the animals. I grabbed a bottle of water, a fire extinguisher, and ran to the part where they were,” recalls Olga.
This is especially important: the animals did not try to run out into the open. Their natural reaction was the opposite — to hide deeper, where there was less light and noise. In a normal situation, such an instinct saves them. In a burning building, it becomes a trap.
Four hits in about 70 minutes
According to Shilimina, there were four hits near the shelter in about 70 minutes. All this time, the fire had to be extinguished under conditions where the danger of a new attack had not disappeared. Before the rescuers arrived, she carried water in buckets and tried to prevent the fire from spreading to where the animals remained.
After the arrival of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, the fire began to be extinguished professionally, but Shilimina still stayed nearby. She explained that the enclosures were made of wooden pallets: if the flames reached them, they would ignite almost instantly. Rescuers demanded that the woman step back, but she continued to help and tried to literally cut off the fire from the part of the shelter where the animals still remained.
For an Israeli reader, the SES is easiest to imagine as the Ukrainian fire and rescue service, which extinguishes fires, dismantles destroyed buildings, and searches for people under the rubble after missile and drone attacks. Only here, the task was also to prevent the fire from reaching dozens of cages and enclosures.
NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency has already reported how Russian strikes pass through ordinary civilian life in the Odessa region. In August, a Russian drone hit the locomotive of a passenger train carrying 340 people. The driver and his assistant died then, but the passengers were evacuated.
Now the shelter has been added to this chronicle.
The dogs did exactly what dogs do when they are scared
The hardest part of Shilimina’s story came after the fire when it became clear who could not be saved. The dogs, hearing the explosions, huddled in their kennels. Some of these kennels were plastic, and when the flames reached them, they burned almost completely.
“The dogs huddled in their kennels out of fear. The kennels were plastic, they just completely burned.”
Shilimina said this in a few words: “The dogs huddled in their kennels out of fear”. In this phrase, perhaps, there is more about what happened than in the entire dry report. They did not run towards the fire, did not do something wrong, did not end up there by accident — they sought a familiar safe place and died right in it.
It was similar with the cats. Some animals managed to get out, but the rest huddled in the farthest corner. Shilimina tried to get to them, but the flames were already blocking the passage.
“Five cats managed to get out, I just grabbed one dog. The rest huddled in the farthest corner. It was impossible to get through because the flames started blocking everything,” she says.
In the end, after assessing the consequences, the death of ten cats and three dogs was confirmed.
“We’re burning”: the door had to be broken down
Even during the fire, Shilimina posted a video from the shelter. In it, she reported that the room where food and other supplies for the animals were stored had caught fire. The door had to be broken down so that those who remained inside had at least a chance to run outside.
Within a few minutes, the fire began to destroy what is usually collected in a shelter over months: food, supplies, medicines, things, and equipment. For an organization where almost two hundred animals live, this is not just material damage. After the fire, the dogs and cats still need to be fed in the morning, the sick need medicines, and the stressed animals need to be examined and placed where they can still be.
People from the neighboring shelter “Lonely Hearts” also came to help “Loving Hearts”. Its founder, Elena Rotanchuk, specifically clarified that their facility was not affected: the staff of the neighboring shelter came specifically to help Shilimina and her animals. She also reported a direct hit on the building where the dogs and cats were.
For Israel, Odessa is not a foreign city at all
In Israel, the word “Odessa” does not require a long historical reference. A huge number of families here have Odessa roots, and the city’s history is closely intertwined with the history of Jewish culture, the Zionist movement, and aliyah. Odessa and Haifa are officially sister cities, as NANews detailed in the article about Russian attacks on Haifa’s sister city.
We also separately told the story of these relations — the agreement between Haifa and Odessa has been in effect since 1992. Therefore, another line in the Ukrainian report “Odessa region was attacked” does not necessarily mean a distant point somewhere on the Black Sea for an Israeli reader. Behind it can stand cities and families connected with Israel for decades.
And on the night of September 29, behind this line stood a shelter where people tried to prevent the fire from reaching the animals.
An Israeli knows what a few minutes to shelter means
In Israel, during an alarm, a person can at least be explained what to do. Where the mamad is, where the miklat is, how much time is approximately left, who needs to be taken by the hand, and who needs help to descend. Even with one pet dog or cat, the siren sometimes turns into a separate problem — the animal gets scared, hides, and does not want to go where the owner is dragging it.
And now, instead of one dog, imagine 136 dogs and 48 cats. Some are rushing around, others are hiding, and others are so scared they stop moving altogether. Some are in enclosures, some are in separate rooms, some are huddled in the farthest corners. And all this is happening not during a training evacuation, but under new explosions, when a building is burning nearby.
Evacuating almost two hundred animals in a few minutes is practically impossible. They cannot be explained that the familiar kennel is more dangerous today than the open yard, that they should not hide in the corner, and that after the next explosion, they need to move to the exit. This is why a strike on a large shelter is so dangerous even when most animals are eventually saved.
That night, Russian attacks hit the entire area
The shelter was not the only damaged civilian object. On the night of September 29, Russian forces attacked civilian and port infrastructure in the Odessa region. An enterprise, port facilities, a lyceum, a private house, passenger and freight vehicles were damaged; eight people were injured, six were hospitalized.
Air raid alerts in the Odessa district were announced several times: from 01:03 to 01:18, then from 01:29 to 01:48, and from 03:02 to 04:04 due to the threat of strike drones. At 04:52, the alarm was announced due to a missile threat, after reports of guided aerial bombs being launched from the Black Sea area. The all-clear for this alarm sounded only at 06:15.
These hours well explain the context of Shilimina’s story. She was not extinguishing a local fire after one explosion in an already safe environment. The area continued to be under threat, the strikes came in series, and she stayed near the enclosures because it was simply impossible to get all the animals out.
NANews has already gathered a broader context of Russian strikes on civilian objects in Ukraine in the article “The Real Face of Russia — Conscious and Ruthless Terror of the Peaceful Population of Ukraine”. The story of “Loving Hearts” now becomes another episode of this war, only here the victims were those who are completely unable to understand what is happening around.
Do not hide this story behind the words “animals also die in war”
The phrase “animals also die in war” sounds almost neutral, as if it were a natural disaster. But the events of that night were quite specific: Russian terrorists attacked the Odessa region, after one of the strikes, the shelter caught fire, and when the fire was extinguished, dead animals were found inside.
They could not know what to do during an air raid alert. They could not distinguish a Russian drone from thunder, understand the direction of the strike, or decide where it was safer. The dogs heard the explosions and huddled in familiar kennels. The cats hid in the far corner. This is how animals usually save themselves from what they fear.
That night, their usual instinct failed them.
Most of the “Loving Hearts” animals survived thanks to people who stayed nearby even when rescuers demanded they step back. But ten cats and three dogs could not be saved.
They just hid from the explosions.
And they never came out of their shelters.
