For much of the war in Ukraine, Daria had reported feeling no sense of personal danger from the aerial attacks. During the worst nights of shelling, the woman, aged 27, found herself able to sleep through the explosions at her flat in Kyiv. Late one May evening, Daria determined that her home had become too unsafe to remain in following an assault on the property. The pair stood in the corridor of their ninth-floor apartment, a boxing match on the television, as blasts sounded in the vicinity and the resulting pressure waves caused the windows to swing open and shut repeatedly. People in Kyiv told a broadcaster that the rising frequency of air strikes is leading them to alter their day-to-day lives. Previously, the nation's warning networks — combining aerial-defence infrastructure with intelligence-gathering capabilities — had given residents advance notice of incoming threats. Beginning that summer, Russia's tactics on the ground began to evolve. From her bed, she tracks developments across Ukraine and the wider world, following issues that span President Donald Trump's policy agenda, anti-corruption protests in Kyiv, and the Epstein files. Each time an air-raid alert sounds, Olha covers her mother with a blanket, props a mattress against the window, and takes shelter in a wardrobe placed behind two interior walls. A cushion was held over her face to protect against fragments of broken glass. Shooting incidents have left a number of individuals wounded or dead in what authorities describe as a pattern of recurring attacks. One local resident described going without sleep and moving through the day in a daze, an account that points to a wider pattern of air raid alerts disrupting daily life in Kyiv at all hours following an uptick in daytime strikes. Shops close their doors and elevated train stations suspend operations, occasionally severing transit links across the two sides of the city divided by the Dnieper River for prolonged stretches. Zelensky has called on allied governments to supply further air-defence systems and interceptor missiles, as one Ukrainian civilian, Olha, drew an analogy between withholding that assistance and refusing a terminally ill patient the treatment they need out of fear that the supplier may one day require it. In another part of the city, Natalia Bushkovska, a mother of two, mentally works through three separate backup plans each evening. Tracking devices embedded in structures can guide rescue personnel to trapped individuals if a building fails. Natalia has said the attacks have been unceasing, adding to the pressure she continues to face. Her son typically sleeps through the overnight disturbances, whereas she and her daughter are awakened on nearly every occasion; she described how recovery from the accumulated sleep loss has grown harder as the conflict moves into its fifth year, with residents across the city reporting increasing exhaustion from the prolonged aerial activity. A source noted that time for recovery was running out, as a ballistic missile attack struck Kyiv on Thursday, 17 September. According to the mayor, the attack left twenty people with injuries.
