Gaming the air raids in Kyiv: A night in a capital at war

Then comes a warning from social-media channels: A couple of Russian attack drones are closing in.

A couple. Not enough to alter my dinner plans but the start of a gamble Kyiv residents like me take every night: How long can we cling to the normal stuff of life before Russia’s steady drone-and-missile barrages drive us underground in search of shelter?

Russia’s latest tactic to wear down Ukrainian resistance is stockpiling munitions for a few days and launching them in a single night to overload air defenses.

The biggest threat comes from Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, each capable of destroying several floors of an apartment building. The longer the sky is quiet, the more tense the conversations in Kyiv’s coffee shops and stores about when the next air raid will be.

During my meal, my phone lies unlocked so I can keep a wary eye on drone status notifications appearing on my screen at shorter and shorter intervals.

Sirens start to wail across the city at 9:06 p.m. as I take a walk after dinner, indicating the first few drones have entered Kyiv’s airspace. Kyivans carry on unperturbed. I head home to get some sleep before the assault’s crescendo.

At my apartment, I begin my nightly checks. The bathtub, a safe place away from the windows and behind an interior wall, is padded with a blanket and pillows—a touch of comfort after I fell asleep there once and woke with a sore neck. I put my electronic devices on to charge and check my go-bag: water, granola bars, a medical kit with two tourniquets, a flashlight, a power bank and some sweaters. Warm sweatpants and socks for the musty underground shelter are folded by my bedside.

The monitoring channels tell me the drones are far away enough for me to sleep before the first bombardment. I turn the volume on my phone to maximum to avoid missing an air-raid alert and set alarms for every 20 minutes to wake up and check on the status of the assault.

As I doze off, at 10:17 p.m., another warning on Telegram: Russian war planes are preparing to take off in the next two hours. I go back to sleep.

The next update is at 10:31 p.m.: There are up to 100 drones in Ukrainian airspace. I try to squeeze in another 20 minutes of fitful rest as I listen for the telltale buzz, which earned the drones the nickname “mopeds" among Ukrainians.

Just after midnight, I hear one. The buzzing grows closer. I lurch toward the bathtub and strain to hear the sound of the drone speeding up, a sign it is plunging toward its target. But the hum remains constant. It is flying past. I check my phone. More are on their way. It is time to go to the air-raid shelter.

The usual crowd stands at the entrance, a covered stairway near the side of a building. They are smoking, chatting and checking their phones, ready to scurry back down at the first sound of trouble.

“They are already buzzing, huh?" one woman sitting in her usual spot by the entryway asks. “When we got here, it was still quiet."

Many people in Ukraine use parking garages or basements for shelter, but this one was built for the task in 1978 during the Cold War. A tattered map on the wall illustrates the potential spread of radiation in case of a nuclear strike. There is wireless internet and beds fashioned from stacks of blank forms for a census that was never carried out.

People arrive with their pets, including a green parrot inside a ventilated backpack and a pooch with a dyed purple tail called Lolita. The regulars greet one another warmly. A group of elderly women save a seat for an older man with an ornate mustache who reads updates from his tablet. His back hurts today. I offer him my chair.

The cold underground turns into a kind of living room housing a couple of dozen people. A blond woman is already sleeping under a blanket with her spaniel beside her, the dog’s graying muzzle peeking out. The boy with the parrot eats sandwiches with his friend as their parents scroll through their phones. A young man plays Candy Crush. Someone snores.

The same updates ping throughout the shelter. Each corner has someone reading from their phone in hushed tones. It is past 12:30 a.m. and there are a few dozen drones in the air, and Russian warplanes carrying cruise missiles have taken off. By 2 a.m. we will know whether they have launched their munitions. Each update comes with a mental calculation of how long the bombs will take to arrive and the morbid question of what and whom they will target.

“Balistyka?" people blurt out as walls vibrate. “Was that a ballistic missile?"

Each explosion, even when it is an interception by Ukrainian air defense, shakes the shelter. Those who were asleep are alert now. Ballistic missiles can only be countered with U.S.-designed Patriots, which Ukraine has in short supply. The shock wave from one makes the body shudder.

“A strike in Solomyanka," a working-class district in Kyiv, the man with the mustache says.

“Ambulances were called," I read out loud from my phone to the neighboring women.

We are left to guess the extent of the damage. It is illegal for Ukrainians to post images of strikes and air-defense systems firing, because Russia is known for hunting down air defenders and carrying out so-called double-tap attacks—striking the same place twice to kill first responders, journalists and civilians who arrive at the scene.

The woman with the spaniel sits up and scans her phone. She asks nobody in particular: How many missiles can a Russian Tu-160 strategic bomber carry?

“Between six and 12," I say.

“Oh God," she responds.

By 2:15 a.m., most of the shelter is awake, sharing grim updates about areas of the city that have been hit. “O bozhe," the woman next to me whispers repeatedly, “Oh God."

Another wave of drones comes an hour later, but some people begin to head home during a period of quiet.

“Is it the end?" says a woman in a white winter jacket. She started coming to the shelter after getting caught near a ballistic strike. She was OK, but she trembles every time she hears the air-raid sirens blare.

“No, people are just tired," her friend responds.

“People have to work tomorrow," says the woman in the white jacket.

“Today," her friend corrects her.

Both women stay put.

By 4.30 a.m., the cold is creeping through my two sweaters and I can’t keep my eyes open. The desire to sleep wins out over fear and I head home, despite the 15 attack drones still in the air.

When I emerge from the shelter, it is nearly dawn. The sky is filled with the sound of birds greeting the rising sun. For an hour, I try to sleep between the machine-gun fire and explosions as Ukrainians battle against the final wave of drones and missiles.

A glance at photos starting to circulate online shows the damage from the strikes. A student dormitory is hollowed out, missing windows. The midsection of a nine-story apartment building has been bombed to the ground by the ballistic missile we heard.

I can also smell it. Fires blaze across the capital. The smell of smoke fills the air. Authorities advise residents to close their windows and avoid the outdoors.

A collective grief descends over the city. Streets bustling the night before fall into a shellshocked whisper. Survivors post condolences online to those who didn’t. People in the streets yawn, their eyes distant and tired. “Was it loud where you were?" Kyivans ask one another by way of a greeting.

The toll of those who didn’t share our shelter or our luck that night is stark: 28 killed and more than 140 wounded.