Major General Igor Konashekov, Russia’s top military spokesman, said on Friday morning that the air force had bombed military airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, but made no mention of the Dnipro strike. 

But there was, as far as witnesses could tell, no military sense to the target that the Russian air force hit in Dnipro on Friday morning. 

The bombs fell on a small commercial compound in a mixed industrial and residential area in the west of the city. 

The buildings were a warehouse for an Italian shoe company, an old Soviet factory repurposed into private studios for small businesses, and an empty office block and workshop undergoing renovation. There was no military asset to be destroyed, according to witnesses. 

Nor were there any soldiers around, unless you count Petrovich, who colleagues said was a retired army officer. 

“They were probably aiming for the railway siding,” said one worker from the shoe company picking through the rubble. The railway line is about 200m (656ft) away from this compound.